Czech Television wants to keep the broadcasting rights for the hockey championship, the football championship, the European football championship Euro and the broadcasting of the Olympics (here it has the rights for free-to-air stations, ed.). It also wants to offer other attractive championships with Czech participation, such as the handball or volleyball championships. At Thursday's Sport Alive conference, CT Sport executive director Jiří Ponikelský said. "Our goal is to promote Czech sport," he said in a discussion in which other representatives of domestic sports media also spoke.
"The alpha and omega of sports broadcasting today is finance, and we have no chance to defend ourselves there," Ponikelský mentioned in the discussion, referring to the fact that many sports broadcasting rights have been transferred to commercial paid competitors and their price has increased significantly.
Stations in the Nova group launched two new channels Nova Sport 5 and 6 this year when they acquired the broadcasting rights to Formula 1 and expanded the range of football competitions broadcast, adding the Europa League alongside the Champions League. In the discussion, TV Nova's sports editor Dušan Mendel also said that in terms of viewer interest, local content in the form of the top domestic football and hockey competitions was the biggest draw.
Also, according to O2 TV's executive director of sports channels Mark Kindernay, viewers are primarily interested in domestic competitions. "The hockey Extraliga has great viewing figures, but the football Chance League is the most watched domestic competition and the broadcasting rights match that," he said. O2 TV currently provides 800 live broadcasts a year and interest in watching sports broadcasts is growing, he said. "There are more viewers and more viewers are willing to pay. Advertiser interest has also increased. We would never do projects that would not make money," he added towards the business efficiency of sports broadcasting.
Lukáš Tomek, editor-in-chief of Sport, said in the debate that the domestic hockey championship, which ultimately ended in gold for the Czech hockey team, was attracting traffic to the sports daily's website by a wide margin. "Hockey rolled on online this year by tens of percent, we achieved record numbers on the web and social media," he added. On the other hand, he said, football's Euro was a disappointment in terms of traffic. Interest in it was even lower than the domestic football league. "The scissors between the national team and the league are very open in terms of attendance," he said.
This year's sports year then helped stabilize the circulation sales of Journal Sport. "After nine months, the decline in print has stopped," Tomek said, adding that strategically the Czech News Center publishing group is focusing more on online. However, he said, publishing a printed sports daily still makes sense, with more than 20,000 copies sold daily. Moreover, the print edition reaches a different audience (mainly middle-aged and older men) than the online version (more than a third of women, 65% of men and younger than the print edition).
Jiří Ponikelský also tried to refute the idea that Czech Television should only broadcast on its sports channel what commercial competitors are not interested in. "We want viewers to see sport and we want to bring broadcasts that bring the nation together," he said. Even sports broadcasts need to have reach in the population for television to be relevant. "Even if we broadcast only small sports, the cost will be high and if it was my company, I will put it into liquidation," he added towards the efficiency of broadcasting.
Dusan Mendel confirmed that acquiring broadcasting rights to the most prestigious sporting events brings subscribers. "We can see it in the Champions League and Formula 1, it has been confirmed. We are trying to reach the mainstream," he said of Nova Sport's goals. He also pointed to the fact that Nova broadcasts a regular daily session of Sports News, on its main channel as a big advantage, allowing it to attract sports coverage on its pay channels.
Source: mediaguru.cz
