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Mobile service providers embrace sports
The busiest moment for Xiao Xie's mobile phone occurred well after midnight last week. As a die-hard football fan, the UEFA European Championship (Euro 2004) in Portugal from June 12 was bliss for Xie. Starting at 2:45 in the morning, he was sitting in front of a TV set watching the game and at the same time his hands were also busy sending mobile messages to comment on the games and submit final score predictions to China Central TV 5 (CCTV5), the most popular Chinese sports TV channel, and other fans. The enthusiasm of people like Xie has been a boon to Chinese mobile service providers (SPs) seeking to maintain high-growth in their business. Beijing Lingxun Interpersonal Science and Technology Development Co Ltd (Lingxun) has been the biggest winner of the recent European football tournament among Chinese SPs, which helps local mobile phone and Internet users communicate with each other and organizations such as CCTV5. "Our rank among China Mobile SPs is normally 11th or 12th, but we are very likely to enter the top 10 in June with the success of Euro 2004," said David Li, chief executive officer (CEO) of Lingxun. The company, the only SP partnering with CCTV5, is also expected to reap a lucrative harvest from the coming Athens Olympics Games in August, and in the AFC Asian Cup in China in July and August. "There are about 80 million Internet users now, but there are more than 300 million households with TV sets and 300 million mobile phone users, so we are trying to find more channels to expand our mobile value-added services from the Internet platform to those of mobile phones and TV sets," said Li. Lingxun also is the sole SP partner with Beijing Television's nine channels. It was estimated that Lingxun took about half of the total sports-related mobile service profits in China and its revenues are expected to more than double this year. Tom Online, the operator of the official Chinese website for Euro 2004, is also seeking to grab a piece of the promising sports-related wireless service business by partnering with TV channels. Besides offering wireless services such as text and picture messages, the NASDAQ and Hong Kong-listed company worked with five TV channels in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces to launch a game called Goal. People can play the game with a mobile phone and the game will be broadcast live by the five channels. "This TV marketing model has been proven during Euro 2004 and it will be further strengthened in the future as it will become a major part of our strategy," said Wang Leilei, CEO of Tom Online. Sina Corp, the biggest SP of the dominant Chinese wireless operator China Mobile and the biggest Internet portal in the country, went even further in co-operating with TV media. The company formed an alliance with China Interactive Sports under the State Sports General Administration last month and the two companies will provide reports about the Athens Olympics Games in August. Sina and China Interactive Sports will hold video interviews with Chinese champions in Athens and the content will be broadcast on websites managed by the two firms as well as more than TV channels. Since CCTV has the exclusive right to broadcast the games in China, the partnership of Sina and China Interactive Sports is the only other provider of TV content about the Chinese Olympic delegation in the country after CCTV. The move won praise from minor TV broadcasters, which will want some non-CCTV content. At the same time, mobile phone users will be able to communicate with Chinese athletes by sending greetings through Sina's wireless message platform. The integration with TV media with mobile phone technology will boost the wireless business of Chinese companies, which have seen a slowdown of the traditional text message business. In the first quarter of this year, two major Chinese Internet companies listed on the NASDAQ Sohu.com Inc and Netease.com Inc reported slow growth in wireless business. That led to declines of stock prices of almost all wireless-related Chinese companies listed on the high-tech-laden NASDAQ. Safa Rastchy, a senior analyst with US investment banker Piper Jaffray, said in an interview in Beijing last week that SPs need to implement new measures including co-operation with TV broadcasters, improving their billing systems, providing better content and using new channels to acquire subscribers. He believed that SPs can work with TV operators in two ways: to use TV as a distribution channel and to make TV programmes more interactive with mobile services.
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