View From the Editor: Over in a Shanghai moment - April 2006  

Readers, it’s not often that S&T arrives at an international airport, dazzled by the flashlights of 200 paparazzi and the shiny buttons on some mighty fine military gentlemen. Thus was our welcome to Seoul, location of the 2006 SportAccord Congress, although we have to confess that the red carpet treatment wasn’t for us. It wasn’t even for IOC president Jacques Rogge who was also in town and more used to being ‘papped’ no doubt. Nope, it was for NFL Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward of the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose mother is Korean. (S&T couldn’t help but wonder what his welcome would have entailed if his father had been Korean as well. Korean Air airmiles for life?)
Hospitality was certainly order of the day in Seoul, although being presented with a whole tube of toothpaste after a meal in a Korean restaurant instead of mints was enough to make S&T and our guests just a little bit paranoid.

News, news, news!

But enough of such dental japery and onward instead to the matters in hand as a jobbing newshound. Sniffing out technology stories was of course high on S&T’s agenda at SportAccord, aside of course from finding out where the annual meeting of our favourite federation was taking place (the International Federation of Serious Sports Drinkers/Federation Internationale des Buveurs Sportifs Seriuex), so that we could prepare accordingly (i.e., choosing appropriate clothing that wouldn’t get ruined by beer; making sure the route back home was clearly marked by a trail of breadcrumbs; preparing a last will and testament – you know, the usual).
Imagine our fascination on hearing that Korean telecoms giants Samsung Electronics and SK Telecoms were in the process of squaring up in a veritable World Wrestling Entertainment-esque frenzy over the thorny issue of mobile handset subsidies. To cut a long story short, Samsung, unlike the other major handset providers in Korea, is refusing to pay SK Telecom, Korea’s leading mobile network operator, a certain sum for every handset that is sold under new regulation in the country relating to discounted pricing. SK Telecom is retaliating by in turn refusing to let its stores give subsidies on Samsung handsets. S&T of course cannot comment on the nuances of Korean telecoms legislation (please can we “phone a friend?”), but it does seem that the toys being thrown out of prams these days are getting increasingly high-tech.
Samsung Electronics was ably represented at SportAccord 2006 by Dr Hung Song, vice president global marketing group of the telecommunications systems division there. Speaking on a panel entitled ‘Getting the most from new media technologies 1 – mobile telephony’, Song recapped the company’s recent success at the Torino 2006 Olympics as a TOP sponsor and tipped the future growth in mobile television services. “In Korea, 450,000 people are already paying $13 a month for mobile TV,” he told the audience. With 38.7m mobile subscribers in the country, a rosy future for compelling content seems likely and sport certainly has a role. Speaking on the same panel, Won Euy Hong, CEO of Eclat Entertainment, outlined the sports that already feature on Korean mobile services, namely soccer, soccer, soccer, soccer, oh and some baseball and basketball too.

ArkSports' SportelAsia panel

Next up, here’s a quiz for you readers. What did the aforementioned panel discussion in SportAccord have in common with the ArkSports’-hosted panel discussion at SportelAsia in Shanghai, 14 days earlier? Or should we say, who? Answers on a postcard to ArkSports Towers, etc. Actually, forget that (or ‘sack that’ as they say in Northern England), we’ll just tell you now. The answer is the fresh-faced Will Muirhead, CEO of Sportev, who is a bit of an S&T pin-up. Muirhead was joined on stage by two other S&T panel stalwarts, Tony Singh, associate, Spectrum Strategy Consultants and Oliver Slipper, CEO of Premium TV. With Dan Markham, VP, business development, communications and new media, Octagon, Clare Taylor, commercial director, PA Sport and Gary Walrath, CEO, Stats Inc, all making their S&T panel debuts, the SportelAsia post-breakfast audience was only too delighted to hear us all waxing lyrical about how sports properties are using technology to increase the value of their rights. There are of course far too many examples to write about now.
Unfortunately, S&T had already winged our way to Seoul before the A1 Grand Prix hit town in Shanghai on 2 April (thus maintaining a fine S&T tradition of just missing out on interesting sports events by booking flights before consulting the sporting calendar – doh). But we did manage to experience a slight thrill when our return flight to the UK from Shanghai (because of course we flew from Shanghai to Seoul via ArkSports Towers in London; anything direct would have been too sensible), was piloted by a British Airways captain called – wait for it – Johnny Herbert. Now there was a guy who put his foot down and shaved a fair chunk off our flight time.
S&T was disappointed to leave the extremely funky Shanghai behind us without seeing the A1 Grand Prix there – or indeed the singing flowerbeds that we had read about in our tourist book. (What on earth do they sing? We will never know!), but, in the interests of local cultural research, we did squeeze in a trip to the famous Xiangyang Market, which is closing down at the end of June 2006, because the city of Shanghai no longer wants to be known as the fake capital of the world. (Eh? We thought it was a real city?). In a twist that can only be worthy of a mention in this column (or ‘blog’ as someone referred to ‘View from the Editor’ at the Hollis Sponsorship Awards the other week, who is very ‘up with the kids’), the market is being bulldozed and instead will re-emerge in an online environment. Does one need a fake credit card to buy fake goods online S&T wonders?

Jesus, live on the internet (allegedly)

On that retail-related note, S&T is signing off until next month and, with the Easter festive season approaching for those who celebrate it, we would like to congratulate our friends at broadband specialist Narrowstep for its latest venture. FaithGlobe.tv, Europe's first internet-delivered Christian television network has just launched using the Narrowstep platform. We always knew that Narrowstep’s ambitions were global; now S&T is pleased to report that the company’s ambitions are heavenly too. At the Duomo in Milan last month, (where S&T went to recover following a lecture to knowledge-thirsty FIFA Masters students), S&T was delighted to see a sign proclaiming that ‘Jesus is now live on the internet!’ Unfortunately, the rest of the sign was in Italian, but we’ll be asking Narrowstep when we can expect to watch the Nazarene live on a pay-per-view basis soon. Ciao for now!

Rachael Church
Editor

Do you know what the singing flowers in Shanghai are actually singing? Or have you been to the Milano Duomo and/or seen Jesus appear on the web? If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in S&T, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com. Or watch television instead. S&T loves the new series of Desperate Housewives in particular. Our favourite character is Bree.

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