The relation between sports and television started years back. We all have in mind the image of Jesse Owen winning four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4X100m relay during the 1936 Nazis Berlin Olympic Games. Thus, we can assume that sport has provided the greatest images ever to television. Moreover, television and sport are truly interdependent. Sport content is vital for the television channels and is rated as premium content. The basic rule that media strategy analysts taught at school is to own those premium content programs at all costs. Perhaps, that is the reason why broadcasters have been spending a huge part of their programme budget for the acquisition of sports content since the last couple of decades. In the modern day, sport TV rights comprise the major part of the programme budget and are regarded as the primary field of expenditure. As sport is the most practiced leisure activity worldwide, its broadcasting through TV gives it a tremendous entertainment dimension, which dominates all the other leisure alternatives such as music, cinema, books, and so on. It has also become a huge industry. For instance, the amount of annual football transfer fees in Europe is equal to the French debt for social security.
[...] Then this sport became professional at the end of the nineteenth century and generated a new business. ii. Football as a worldwide game Football is worldwide game' and it is known as the game for everyone. One paradox of the modern day football is that it is the richest sport ever and is very popular among worldwide low-income classes. It is so popular because football is a simple game (there is only seventeen rules) and because you don't need a lot of equipment: a ball, two goals and that's it. [...]
[...] Consequently, on the other part, the growth of the liberalized TV market needs sports content to keep on expanding, and that's one of the first explanations why these TV rights are so expensive. First, let's have a quick overview of the changes in the European TV market as a whole since its liberalization, and the differences between each national TV market. The second part will focus on the major sport events that are being greatly prized, analyse the differences between each event and explain why they are so costly. [...]
[...] The competition is very harsh between each station to obtain sports TV rights, which assure them to occupy a leading place in their home market. b. Sports TV rights: an important cost, but source of revenue for channels i. The acquisition of sports TV rights and its average cost for channels As mentioned in introduction, sport content is considered as premium content and therefore very crucial for TV channels. In Europe of the annual audience share is gained by the broadcasted sports events (mostly football and Formula One). [...]
[...] We will see later some figures while having a quick overview of the major sport events, and a detailed analysis of the football case. The media concentration in Europe (the mergers between satellite competitors in Italy and France, the place of Canal Plus Vivendi, NewsCorp, etc.) builds strong groups that are now able to respond to this demand. Nonetheless, free trade throughout Europe television is impeded. ii. Sports linked revenue for TV If those companies are managing to create monopolies, in order to pay a lot to acquire sport TV rights, they do so because it is profitable. [...]
[...] Since the first time it was telecasted in 1960, the Olympic TV rights have been a rare opportunity for networks to broadcast premium content. This chance is to own 4,000 hours of live which make a network capture 50% of the television audience each night for the two-and-a-half weeks. Furthermore, this usual habit that lasts twenty days establishes a relationship between the viewers and the network for other scheduled programmes of the network. The US TV rights Olympics market is twice the European one. [...]
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