Crossed signals

Sports fans have taken a beating this week, as more and more news of unpaid debts and loose ends continue to plague sports coverage on television and print.

Yesterday was the deadline set by NBN 4 for Summit Sports World to pay off at least half of what it owes the network. That amounts to P 26 million of the total P 52 million.

"We already sent Summit a demand letter asking them to settle at least half of the amount they owe us by the end of October," says NBN chair Mia Concio.

"Earlier, they committed to paying us P 8 million from their receivables from advertisers. We said we’ll take it. But while we’re grateful for it, they still need to pay us the rest of the money."

As of the time this piece was written yesterday afternoon, there was still no word of Summit having paid NBN. This would have serious repecussions on both parties. NBN would have trouble meeting its financial obligations and would have to seek other sources to be able to disburse its benefits - such as thirteenth month pay - to its employees. This coming week, the NBN board will meet to decide whether or not to take legal action against Summit for not living up to its obligations.

Since March, the situation stared to get progressively worse. At first, the Summit-NBN partnership was meeting all its payment schedules. Then there was a change in management in Summit, which supposedly caused a delay in payments to NBN and suppliers as the company reorganized. Then there was a second reorganization that returned things to normal, or so it seemed. Since then, Summit has also been ignoring other suppliers whom it owes money to.

For example, officers of Summit have continuously turning a deaf ear to calls and follow-ups from Atomic Sports Corporation, producers of The Basketball Show, who also produced the PBA halftime features until June, when it became apparent that the money was not forthcoming. Concio has gone so far as to advise suppliers to write directly to Summit’s president Fidel Cu, or seek legal remedies.

Earlier, the domino effect was already felt by viewers of the simultaneous broadcast of the PBA’s games. Wednesday morning, the IBC-13 board convened to decided whether or not to continue airing the games, considering that NBN owed them over P 70 million, a figure that could balloon to P 90 million by the end of the year. They voted to pull the plug and stem the hemorrhaging.

This situation has already caused problems for the network, considering that

Viva-Vintage also owes them a staggering amount from the previous PBA contract. IBC-13 refused to take the hit any longer. NBN also owes the supplier of the Rolltec device which scrolls streamers of different advertisers along the sideline facing the cameras during live games. The device can accommodate more than 25 advertisers and increase revenues by tens of millions of pesos.

Regardless of its situation, NBN has firmly committed to continuing to broadcast the PBA for the duration of its pact with the league, whether or not the flow of money from Summit continues.

"The PBA is not involved with this," Concio affirms. "This is between Summit and NBN. We will keep on broadcasting the games while we have a contract with the PBA."

The PBA, meanwhile, is also silently deliberating whether or not to stay within the agreement, since some of the conditions for the contract have been adversely affected by the financial problems and changes in the marketing group, which in turn have turned off key advertisers of the games.

Another bit of bad news on another front: we may not get accurate or even timely news from the Southeast Asian Games come December. According to Philippine Olympic Committee media attache and veteran sports journalist Gus Villanueva, the Vietnam SEA Games Organizing Committee has spread out the athletes according to sport, instead of housing them in just one or two athletes’ villages. This will cause mayhem among the media covering the games, especially for newspapers that regularly send only one or two reporters to cover the entire range of events.

"Instead of us just being able to make a phone call to arrange interviews in one place, now everything is spread out," Villanueva elaborates. "Hotels will be assigned per sport making it more difficult to contact athlete. And we haven’t even tested the computer system that the organizers have set up. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we get the proper results on time."

The main hub will be Hanoi, where the biggest medal hauls like athletics (43 medals), shooting (40 medals), swimming (32 medals), wushu (28 medals), gymnastics, wrestling and pencak silat (22 medals apiece) will be staged.

Basketball and eight other sports will be held in Ho Chi Minh City, while table tennis will be at Haishung. Because of the tight schedule, some events will start ahead of the formal opening ceremonies on December 5, like football (November 28), water polo (December 1), shooting (December 2), boxing (December 3), and archery, gymnastics, rowing and chess (all starting December 4).

Because everything is spread out, some of our newspapermen will definitely have problems making their deadlines. There is a special meeting of all heads of delegation in Hanoi this weekend to thresh out such problems.

More bad news for the Filipino sports fan.