I have a question for our resident SUM experts, whoever you are. Does SUM (and by association MLS) stand to benefit if the WWC is played in the USA? Clearly the TV audience will be much much larger than it would've been had the tournament gone ahead in China. Have the financials behind the broadcast of the tournament already been etched in stone? Or does SUM/MLS now stand a chance of squeezing a little more money out of the deal? I would think if nothing else a lot of potential sponsors, who weren't interested before, might be interested now.
Not an expert but your question is very difficult to answer because so many variables have changed, one of the the largest being the time slots of the games. The change in the time slot should bring more interest in the games but I can not say whether that interest as relates to sponsorship and ratings will outweigh the cost of acquiring the more expensive time slots. Andy
Everything is relative in TV. SUM made out in the WC last year because people wanted to buy in after the team did well and ratings were good. So they could charge higher rates when new people started wanting to jump in. Then they turned some of those people into MLS sponsors. Success dpends on how the ratings and sponsorship interest are. Also, sponsors may be guaranteed a certain rating, which can affect the bottom line. They will get more favorable times and possibly more people interested because it's at home, but the bar may be higher and the time buy rates more expensive. And I don't think anything is etched in stone. As long as one side thinks they can get a better deal, nothing in TV is final until the ratings are in.
I guess this means they can also make money by selling broadcast rights abroad? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/07/s...00&en=a93a9e4a9d069436&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
That's service fees. Other entities that own the rights to broadcast the event don't want to go to the expense of actually setting up cameras, etc. Not to mention the difficulty of setting up 150 sets of cameras in each stadium. So instead, they pay a service fee to the host broadcaster. The host broadcaster cleans up, and the rest of them save money by being able to just free edit from the host's global feed, and dub in their own 3 second tape delayed commentary. I wonder if SUM will team with Cuban to provide a HD feed for the worldwide market? The last world cup had some high definition broadcasts in Korea and Japan, and possibly other places.
it's times like this that make me smile... sum is a fantastic seperate entity for the hsg and aeg... is kraft involved in this? i'd imagine he is, but i can't seem to recall at the moment regardless, the hindsight brilliance of anschutz snapping up the world cup rights is incredible... combined with the mexico promoting rights in the u.s. and the other various things they do
Kraft has no part of SUM. When SUM was being formed was pretty much at the time when the rumors of the Kraft's purposely missing a cash call to the league were being floated by certain members of the soccer media. Since then, the Kraft's have been pretty obvious in that they will continue to fund the Revs only if they can keep the costs reasonable. Unlike Hunt or Phil, they have no real vision for the league, which is certainly their option. My conspiracy theory is that the Kraft's made some sort of backroom deal between MLS and US Soccer that if they kept funding the Revs, that US Soccer would continue to push events towards the Razor. This is based on nothing but conjecture. Andy
Would the service fees already be decided at this point, i.e. will they know going in how much they will make from the worldwide feed or is this part of the risk?
Interesting take. I would never have considered Dentsu a large investor in MLS. Certainly they have invested much less than say the Kraft's have. I considered them a minor investor who wanted at one time to become a major investor but it never came to be. Andy
I doubt it could be decided since I would think the time zones the games are played in will greatly affect how much a country would pay for the world rights. The time zone difference between China and the US is obviously huge, so one of the variables to the equation has changed. Andy
I would think they could get some decent money from foreign broadcasts. I saw the last WWC on Eurosport. They showed numerous matches and promoted the tournament heavily.
Some interesting points in the previous posts. I definitely think some of the games will be doubleheaders to eliminate costs and assure the non-USA games will be successful. The marketing seems to be issue with this. One of the posts about Dentsu being involved with SUM reminded me that I think Dentsu is also involved with FIFA. They were part of the marketing group in Korea and Japan. I wonder if this will help out the case for the game to come to the US.
Well, Dentsu is a member of the SUM group, and they were a large investor in the league from the start. They've never operated a team. There was talk about Dentsu and Rothenberg adding some more money to the pot to get the operator rights for San Jose, but it never happened. Just because they don't operate a team, I wouldn't assume that they are not a major investor in the league. If you review the Rothenberg testimony from the lawsuit, there is some more information in there where he's talking about his shares in the league, and discusses the Dentsu situation a bit. I don't think there's any information on how much their shares are worth, but he had a lot of money in the league, part of which he purchased, and part of which was compensation for his time in setting up the league and some sort of ongoing operations assistance.