Date announced for Sport and Technology: The Conference 2007!
S&T is delighted to announce that the date has been set for the third edition of Sport and Technology: The Conference. The highly-acclaimed event will return to Central London on Friday 29, June 2007, and once again feature in-depth panel discussions, keynote presentations and an evening cocktail party and charity raffle, all of which have been staples of the event since its inception in 2005. Sport and Technology: The Conference will continue to present areas of importance to both rights owners and technology companies and will be the must-attend event of 2007 for all those working in the sports industry. Further details will be rolled out over the coming weeks on www.sportandtechnologyconference.com and within Sport and Technology. As the event is expected to be a sell-out in 2007 as in the previous two years, potential delegates can register their interest in advance of ticket sales by e-mailing stuart.lewis@sportbusiness.com. Members of the Sport and Technology Executive Club (STEC) will receive a discount. The next STEC event will be held on Thursday 3 May and will be hosted by Virgin Media at the company's London offices.
IOC launches Beijing 2008 new media tender
The International Olympic Committee has launched the tender process for the sale of its internet and mobile rights for the territory of China for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The IOC has already sold over-the-air TV rights in China for the Games to broadcaster CCTV. "We are looking for offers that develop the promotion and coverage of the Olympic Games, embrace new technologies and guarantee the widest possible audience in China for the Olympic Games across a variety of media platforms," said IOC marketing and television director Timo Lumme in a statement. The deadline for bids is 18 April 2007.
New YouTube?
News Corporation and NBC Universal are heading up a group of media companies that are building an online video service aiming to challenge Google's YouTube. NBC and News Corp will create a new website that features full-length films and television shows and Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and Time Warner's AOL, will distribute the shows on their sites. Clips will be made available that users can modify and share with their friends. Meanwhile, media giant Viacom is suing YouTube and Google in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York for massive intentional copyright infringement of Viacom's entertainment properties. The suit is seeking more than $1bn in damages, as well as an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from further copyright infringement. The complaint contends that almost 160,000 unauthorised clips of Viacom's programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5bn times.
Rewarding times for Inter Milan
Italian soccer giant Inter (pictured right courtesy of Getty Images Sport/AFP and photographed by Paco Serinelli) recently held a press conference at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in Milan's San Siro district to unveil the club’s new loyalty programme in partnership with Reward Italy. The programme uses a unique technology developed by Reward UK in conjunction with the world’s largest banks to make participating in loyalty programmes simple and easy. The Cardless Reward Technology allows Inter fans to simply register their payment card details with Inter and automatically collect points when shopping at 100s of participating outlets. For every one Euro spent in participating retailers, cardholders can collect between 1 and 20 points. Points can then be redeemed with Inter for an exciting range of rewards such as a half-time penalty shoot-out with players, signed memorabilia, or a season ticket. Participating retailers currently include iTunes, lastminute.com, BOL, Hertz, Tiscali and Ducati, with many more to be recruited over the coming months both online and on the high street.
Lewinton joins Virgin Media
Newly created media company Virgin Media has appointed Peter Lewinton as its head of sport. Lewinton will be responsible for developing a broadband sports offering based initially around English Premier League soccer. Lewinton, 38, joins Virgin Media from the 365 Media Group where he had been director of rights and video production. He will speak at SportBusiness Campus on 19 April, in a panel moderated by S&T Editor Rachael Church-Sanders entitled ‘New technical developments in broadcast and online media; impact and opportunities for sponsors'. See http://campus07.sportbusiness.com/modules/module10.htm. Lewinton and Virgin Media will host the next meeting of the Sport and Technology Executive Club (STEC) which will be held on Thursday 3 May at the company's London offices. Meanwhile, Virgin Media has taken over the title sponsorship of the Yamaha British Superbike team from its Virgin Mobile brand for the 2007 season.
Busy Red Bee Media
Digiturk, the only digital satellite television provider in Turkey, has bought Red Bee Media’s unique sports technology, Piero, to enhance its coverage of the Fortis Turkish Cup and Turkcell Premier Super League. Piero enables better analysis of sports games by allowing the viewer to see play from all angles. The network is the main owner of the broadcasting rights of Turkcell Turkish Super League, which is the premier league in Turkish nationwide soccer and the most popular sporting competition in the country. The competition is played on Lig TV, one of Digiturk' s main sports channels. Meanwhile, Red Bee Media has announced the launch of Red Bee Media Australia. This will include, subject to finalisation of contracts, opening a state-of-the-art Broadcast Centre in Australia in 2008, which will bring together all of Red Bee Media's existing Sydney operations into a new multi-client facility. The facility will use similar media management and playout technology to Red Bee Media's existing facility in London, UK. The technology supports the media workflow principle of ingesting content once and using it many times to enable broadcasters, content owners and platform providers efficient delivery of media to multiple-platforms, whether it be traditional TV services, broadband or mobile.
Is Britney Spears the ultimate fish?
Internet Poker site UltimateBet has released the results of its latest online poker player survey which asked "Which celebrity would you most like to challenge in a must-win Texas Hold 'em poker tournament?" The ‘it girl’ of endless drama - Britney Spears - topped internet poker players' lists of most-desired and easily-beatable celebrity rivals. UltimateBet surveyed just over 12,000 of its online poker players to find out which celebrity they would like to see seated across from them in a must- win poker tournament. When facing this situation, 46% choose bald rehab, drive-through celeb Britney Spears (pictured right courtesy of Getty Images Sport and photographed by Ethan Miller). Her recent bizarre activities were widely noted as evidence of weak poker play. "Given her erratic behaviour, it's evident that most folks consider Britney a fish - easy to beat," stated UltimateBet spokesperson George MacLean. "What's fascinating is that most players are willing to endure staring at a bald Britney in order to win the tournament. Now that's dedication!"
Narrwowstep completes $7.1m financing
Narrowstep, the ‘TV on the internet’ company, has completed a private placement of its convertible notes and warrants in New York resulting in gross proceeds to the company of $7.1m. Investors in the financing include Granahan McCourt Capital, which is owned by David McCourt, the company's interim CEO, and Roger Werner, a director of the company. Narrowstep expects to end the year with over 500 channels launched. Recent launches include broadband channels for UK commercial broadcaster ITV, Martial Arts TV, Bebin TV, London TV, Cycling.tv, as well as the Torino 2006 Paralympic Winter Games.
Broadband growth enters new phase
Countries such as South Korea, Japan and, to a lesser extent, the US are entering a new phase of broadband development, according to analyst eMarketer and its new report Broadband Worldwide: 2005-2011 report. "The market is moving from the high-speed internet to the very-high-speed internet," said the report author Ben Macklin. The process is well underway in South Korea and Japan, where broadband users are trading up from DSL (digital subscriber line) to higher-bandwidth technologies such as optical fiber. Earlier in the decade, Japan instigated a policy to roll out optical fiber to homes across the country, and in 2006 there are approximately 7.5m fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers, the greatest number of FTTH subscribers in the world. In North America, broadband adoption has occurred even more rapidly in Canada than in the US, with eMarketer estimating that over 50% of Canadian households at the end of 2005 had broadband, compared with less than 38% of US households at the same time.
The Poker Channel expands
On 1 March 2007, UK-based The Poker Channel expanded into Europe, launching Scandinavia and France’s first dedicated poker channel. Commercial director, Chris White, has inked carriage deals with leading networks in every major poker territory in Europe including Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, France and Germany. The channel is maintaining its presence in the UK through its channel block deals, and the rest of the world through its broadband feed (www.PokerChannelBroadband.com). Speaking to S&T, White said: “We are able to reach countries where there are grey areas surrounding the legality of poker as we operate out of the UK as part of the Television Without Frontiers Directive.” Crispin Nieboer, Founder CEO added: “Scandinavia, France and Germany represent the most sought after, but hard to reach, countries for our sponsors, following the removal of the US from the market, and over-supply to the maturing UK market. Our commercial partners are delighted that we can offer a low cost, focused and legal way to access all these high growth markets simultaneously, featuring sponsorship for real-money .com poker sites, in a way that no local broadcaster can.” Next up on The Poker Channel’s wish-list are The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria. “After that we’ll hopefully look further east to markets experiencing growth in poker such as Poland and Romania,” said White. “There’s an obvious appetite for poker for us to continue tapping into.”
Page from ArkSports' Sport and Technology (www.sportandtechnology.com) on 2008-10- 1 : News - March 2007 : http://www.sportandtechnology.com/page/0472.html
S&T is delighted to announce that the date has been set for the third edition of Sport and Technology: The Conference. The highly-acclaimed event will return to Central London on Friday 29, June 2007, and once again feature in-depth panel discussions, keynote presentations and an evening cocktail party and charity raffle, all of which have been staples of the event since its inception in 2005. Sport and Technology: The Conference will continue to present areas of importance to both rights owners and technology companies and will be the must-attend event of 2007 for all those working in the sports industry. Further details will be rolled out over the coming weeks on 
Italian soccer giant Inter (pictured right courtesy of Getty Images Sport/AFP and photographed by Paco Serinelli) recently held a press conference at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in Milan's San Siro district to unveil the club’s new loyalty programme in partnership with Reward Italy. The programme uses a unique technology developed by Reward UK in conjunction with the world’s largest banks to make participating in loyalty programmes simple and easy. The Cardless Reward Technology allows Inter fans to simply register their payment card details with Inter and automatically collect points when shopping at 100s of participating outlets. For every one Euro spent in participating retailers, cardholders can collect between 1 and 20 points. Points can then be redeemed with Inter for an exciting range of rewards such as a half-time penalty shoot-out with players, signed memorabilia, or a season ticket. Participating retailers currently include iTunes, lastminute.com, BOL, Hertz, Tiscali and Ducati, with many more to be recruited over the coming months both online and on the high street. 
Internet Poker site UltimateBet has released the results of its latest online poker player survey which asked "Which celebrity would you most like to challenge in a must-win Texas Hold 'em poker tournament?" The ‘it girl’ of endless drama - Britney Spears - topped internet poker players' lists of most-desired and easily-beatable celebrity rivals. UltimateBet surveyed just over 12,000 of its online poker players to find out which celebrity they would like to see seated across from them in a must- win poker tournament. When facing this situation, 46% choose bald rehab, drive-through celeb Britney Spears (pictured right courtesy of Getty Images Sport and photographed by Ethan Miller). Her recent bizarre activities were widely noted as evidence of weak poker play. "Given her erratic behaviour, it's evident that most folks consider Britney a fish - easy to beat," stated UltimateBet spokesperson George MacLean. "What's fascinating is that most players are willing to endure staring at a bald Britney in order to win the tournament. Now that's dedication!"
On 1 March 2007, UK-based The Poker Channel expanded into Europe, launching Scandinavia and France’s first dedicated poker channel. Commercial director, Chris White, has inked carriage deals with leading networks in every major poker territory in Europe including Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, France and Germany. The channel is maintaining its presence in the UK through its channel block deals, and the rest of the world through its broadband feed (
