Soccer wars heat up Japan nets rev up bids
SkyPerfect, NHK, others vying for World Cup rights
|
More Articles:
Most Viewed:
Nine(10938 views)Spielberg abandons 'Harvey'(5422 views)Johnny Depp eyes Pancho Villa role(2894 views)Anderson working on 'Master'(2569 views)Imprint Entertainment to remake 'Phone'(1322 views)Box office incumbents stay strong(1319 views) |
The 1998 World Cup final matchup between Japan and Argentina was the highest rated sports program in Japanese TV history with a 67.3% ratings number. The numbers for World Cup finals matches hosted by Japan and South Korea in 2002 are expected to be enormous for the Japanese matches and strong for all the other marquee games.
The ratings prospect for the 2002 tournament has led to a bidding war among Japanese nets and satcaster SkyPerfecTV for rights to the games that has pushed up the asking price of broadcasting rights in Japan to $250 million, industry sources said.
The price marks a hefty increase from the 400 million yen ($3.7 million) paid by a consortium of webs led by Japanese pubcaster NHK for the 1998 games.
The webs have been in talks with a Swiss-based agency representing soccer’s governing body FIFA for the rights to the games since June of last year but the network consortium has balked at the hefty pricetag. FIFA rules give priority to terrestrial broadcaster for rights to the World Cup, but the chance to score a major coup in acquiring rights to the biggest sporting event in Japanese television history has not gone unnoticed by SkyPerfecTV.
Landmark deal
A Japanese news agency reported that while the nets have been dithering in talks, SkyPerfecTV bought the rights to the matches in a landmark deal.
The direct-to-home satcaster -- with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Sony Corp., Japanese web Fuji Television Network Inc. and Softbank as its main investors -- acquired the games in a move that will significantly increase its subscriber base from the nearly 2 million subs currently enlisted by the satcaster, Kyodo News reported.
The Japanese web consortium led by NHK was trying to seek a separate deal apart from the SkyPerfecTV pact instead of negotiating a resale arrangement with the satcaster, Kyodo added.
A SkyPerfecTV spokesman denied that any deal for rights to the game has been reached.
“The reports of us acquiring a deal for the rights to the World Cup finals were not correct,” the spokesman told Daily Variety. Prior to the 1998 World Cup finals, the only other international sporting event that generated this kind of interest and these ratings numbers here came in 1964 when Japan’s women’s volleyball team squared off against the Soviet Union in Tokyo for the Olympic gold medal. Japan won the gold and NHK got ratings of 66.8% for its broadcast.
