The main event

Last month, Wizja TV launched the Wizja-Sport channel in its bid to bring more subscribers into it's pay TV portfolio. That launch coincides with a landmark pricetag of about $500,000 that sports programming leader Canal+ paid to obtain one-season broadcasting rights for the Petro Plock soccer club, according to industry members.
"Canal+, just like us, wants the best sports, but only one (of us) is going to have it," said Peter Claydon-Spence, director general of Wizja-Sport.
Wizja's race for No 1. won't come cheap. Current estimates for broadcast rights to soccer matches in Poland run $8 million-$10 million for the entire market, or about 25% of the overall value of the nation's sports sponsorship and broadcast market, according to industry members. The price tag for first round championship games is running about $50,000, they said.
Those figures represent a more than fivefold increase over the past three years and could double or triple by over the next five years.
But Wizja and Canal+ appear ready to pay the price. And although Canal+ has gobbled up the rights to most Polish teams, Wizja is scoring points where it can, getting exclusive rights to broadcast cup matches, among them the Sweden-Poland match last weekend.
But gobbling up live broadcast rights has some crying foul, and regulators are considering rules to guarantee distribution to non-pay TV watchers, industry members said. Pay TV operators may have found an out: retransmission. Let broadcasters pick through leftovers for a fee.
Since its launch of Wizja Sport in mid-September, Wizja TV has broadcast live coverage of two UEFA soccer cup matches and last weekend's Poland-Sweden match. Wizja also will likely get rights for up to three other UEFA cup matches over the next four weeks, according to industry members. During the first channel's first 10 days, Wizja grabbed 32,000 new paid subscribers, Wizja said.
"We see that the future of Wizja TV will rely on Wizja Sport," said Ross Newens, general director of Wizja TV. Newens wouldn't reveal how much the station plans to invest in Wizja Sport, but setting up sports could run $28 million-$30 million, he said.
Wizja Sport is only a launching pad, the company said. Access to financing for expansion received a significant boost this year when deep-pocketed United Pan-European Communications (UPC) acquired Wizja TV and cable provider Polska Telewizja Kablowa (PTK) through the $1 billion purchase of @Entertainment. The company projects linking up 2 million homes to its cable service by the end of next year and Wizja figures prominently in the development here and throughout the region. Currently Wizja boasts 1.2 million subscribers on the back of its PTK hook-ups.
"We are looking at Wizja Sport Channel as a prototype for our other properties throughout Europe," said Nimrod Kovacs, executive chairman of UPC's Central European operations. "We are looking at introducing a sport channel in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, some time next year."
Wizja Sport's roll-out includes 12 hours of daily programming prepared initially by 100 staffers. In addition to live coverage of sporting events, Wizja Sports will feature Polish sport stars, such as Jan Tomaszewski, a goalkeeper of the famous Polish football team led by Kazimierz Gorski. It will also feature Przemyslaw Babiarz and Bozydar Iwanow, popular sport presenters taken from national broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP).
Although Wizja may have stolen the sports spotlight with live coverage of recent high-profile matches, it faces stiff competition from Canal+, which pioneered sports programming several years ago and holds long-term broadcasting rights to most of the 16 teams in the Polish league.
"Eighty percent of our programming is live coverage," said Tomasz Kazmierowski, deputy director general of Canal+ Polska.
Canal+'s sports brand is well recognized. Polster Demoskop reported in a recent survey that 92% of respondents said Canal+ covers sport events not covered by other stations and it broadcasts them live. Canal+, which started five years ago and now has more than 300,000 subscribers, focused on soccer from the start as part of its entertainment package that also includes movies. The pay TV operator has no near-term plans to counteract Wizja with a similar sports channel, Kazmierowski said.
"Never say no, but in the approximate future there won't be a new channel," he said. Canal+ downplayed Wizja's new launch, citing its strength in the domestic and international arena.
"We have the rights to broadcast all the Polish premiere league, with the exception of Legia," Kazmierowski said. Moreover, Canal+ broadcasts important European leagues, including the English, Italian, Spanish, French and German leagues, he said. Despite its strength on the soccer field, Canal+ is also pursuing other main events such as boxing, tennis and the Formula One global motor racing championship.
With most of the domestic market under the Canal+ brand, Wizja is pursing a broader game plan and is also moving into motorsports such as car rallies and speedway in addition to boxing and other venues, industry members.
Regardless who wins the pay TV race, the current battle for top spot in live sports coverage is fueling a seachange in sports. In soccer, for example, clubs had to pay public broadcaster TVP to carry the games in the early 1990s, said Alicja Tafelska, market researcher with Warsaw office for sports Germany sports marketing firm UFA Sports.
That all changed three years ago when Canal+ paid about $500,000 for broadcast rights of about a half dozen Polish soccer teams, Tafelska said. "The rights are more and more expensive," she said.
The sky could be the limit, according to some market watchers, but that all depends on how clubs cycle money back into the game. In the U.K., broadcasting rights for the Premier League are going for $1 billion, said Paul Turner, head of Turning Point, a sponsorship and broadcasting rights firm focused on the motorsport industry.
While Poland won't reach the U.K. figure for a couple of decades, the $30 million market for broadcasting rights and sponsorship could double or triple over the coming five years, Turner said.
With stations branching beyond the soccer field for live coverage, the overall sports sector is also benefiting. Current spending on sponsorship and broadcasting rights is estimated at about $30 million for the entire sports sector, Turner said.
Thus, while soccer isn't everything, broadcast rights to matches alone accounts for about 25% of the total sports market, he said.
The high price pay-TV is willing to pay to expand its subscriber base is slowly forcing terrestrial broadcasters out of the market of live coverage. Although they may be down, broadcasters vow they are not out for the count.
"Sport programming is a very attractive product, and if you don't have it, it weakens your position on the market," said Marian Kmita, new head of sports programs at Polsat.
Polsat will also be a contester in the race for rights to cover the Football World Cup vowed Piotr Nurowski, a Polsat board member. "But not at any price... There are also other events which can attract a huge audience."
One of Polsat's recent sport broadcast hits was the Golota-Liverspoon fight, the broadcaster said. The transmission received more than 80% of the market share, said Nurowski, adding that some sport events shouldn't be restricted to people who can pay for watching them on pay-TV. "In England matches of the English national team have to be broadcast by open TV stations," he said.
The entry fee to pay-television usually involves a decoder and monthly subscription fees. Subscribers to Wizja's service first must pay zl. 299 for the decoder then a zl. 59 monthly fee for the basic programming package including the new sports channel. Canal+ charges zl. 35-zl. 69 in monthly fees. On the other hand, viewers can access TVP and Polsat basically for free. The trade-off, however, is advertising, the major revenue stream of the broadcast market. And because of TVP's status as a public broadcaster, it gets funds from a zl. 10.60 monthly subscriber fee.
Soccer is currently the most expensive discipline to cover and it's becoming a domain of private stations, said Robert Wichrowski, director of sports programs at TVP's first channel (TVP1).
"The market is spoiled by the competing TV stations, and often exorbitant prices for rights to live coverage have nothing to do with the prestige of a sport event," he said. If it's possible to produce several segments of an extremely popular soap opera, you cannot expect management to consider the live broadcast, Wichrowski said. TVP, however, has the rights to coverage of the Polish Basketball League, among other sporting events, Wichrowski said. As the national broadcaster, TVP will likely maintain its front position in broadcasting the Olympic Games, under Olympic Committee guidelines, according to market watchers.
Faced with the stale spoils of live coverage, broadcasters could find some protection under guidelines regulators are now considering to guarantee broader distribution of sporting events.
The National Radio and Television Council (KRRiTV) and the government are in the process of working out a proposal that would set rules for universal distribution of coverage of some live sports events, said Joanna Stepien, a spokeswoman for Juliusz Braun, chief of the KRRiTV.
"But, it's only a proposal and we will have to wait for a final government version of the draft," Stepien said.
Meanwhile, pay-television operators are looking at ways to appease naysayers and at the same time recover some of their escalating costs. For example, Wizja TV said it will broadcast the football match between the Polish national team and Sweden and then retransmit it later on TVP.
"The same live transmission can be retransmitted by other TV stations immediately after it's over with costs shared," said Nurowski of Polsat. "It may become kind of a custom on the market."
In addition to live coverage, broadcasters and some industry watchers are concerned the current buy up of live coverage rights could lead to a news blackout, at least with respect to video clips of sporting events aired on news programs.
"In accordance with the European Convention, everybody has the right to use sports events as a basis for the news program," said Wichrowski of TVP. "I would never deny access to events which are covered by TVP to other stations."
Wizja said it's obvious that some events will be available exclusively. "But, we won't deny access to sport events," said Claydon-Spence of Wizja Sport. "On request, we can provide news access to our pictures."