ESPN eyes the Philippines

Nine years ago, the worldwide leader in sports programming partnered with one of the biggest broadcasting entities in the continent to form ESPN Star. Today, they are looking at ways to broaden their share of the market in countries like the Philippines, and create innovative new genres to attract non-traditional sports markets.

"There are two things that drive sports viewership," explains Adam Zecha, ESPN Star Sports vice-president for marketing. "The first is nationalistic interest, as in the example of Taiwan basketball, Korea’s World Cup, and Malaysian sepak takraw. People want to see their national heroes perform on an international stage. The other is international sports they’ve grown up watching."

ESPN Star uses two transponders on the AsiaSat 3 satellite to manage its thirteen feeds. Of course, each big market has its own proclivities. India and its sub-continent, for example, is full of avid cricket fans, with a growing percentage of field hockey, tennis and golf viewers. China has a passion for football, and ESPN helped organize and promote a wildly popular new basketball league in Taiwan, the SBL.

"We try to make sure to have local and regional content, primarily a mix of the best in international content and a good sampling of local and regional sports," Zecha continues.

"One very important function we perform is popularizing sports," affirms Himanshu Verma, ESPN Star’s marketing communications director. "This we have done with soccer in India, for example. We also have a very popular hockey league, the PHL, which is pulling in a bigger and bigger share of viewers from European countries, because of the participation. There are seven or eight Pakistani players, and about thirteen European players. So even people from Holland and Germany and other countries watch the matches."

The main challenge for ESPN Star has been studying the widely diverse market that is Asia. Their ESPN SportsCenter, emanating from Singapore, reflects the cultural uniqueness of its main markets through its on-camera presentors, although it is broadcast in English. Simply put, the bulk of the audience falls into two distinct markets.

"The first camp includes Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Indochina, China and so on," Zecha enumerates. "They predominantly watch soccer: the Premiere League, English FA Cup, the UEFA Cup, and also golf, tennis and the like. The other camp includes the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, and they love the "B" sports: basketball, boxing, billiards, badminton, bowling and baseball."

In view of this, ESPN Star is trying to revive the idea of a regional basketball league, to include the best commercial teams from the basketball hotbeds in the continent. They are also looking at pushing deeper into markets like the Philippines, which they feel can still be maximized.

"We also want to create sports-related, non-traditional sports programming, like "NFL Playmakers", "The Dream", and so on, and what players do off the court, and so on. I think people would want to see Efren Reyes do a trick-shot show, a World Series of poker, things like that. There’s also the possibility of doing localized versions of SportsCenter. Obviously, if we did one in the Philippines, it would be in English; in Thailand, it would be in Thai, and so on."

But for countries like the Philippines, there are still major staples, properties like the NBA.

"The NBA is universally accepted, although it has had its ups and downs, and has been going through a catharsis of sorts, a revamping period," Zecha says. "It has always been available in Asia. It was being syndicated in the early 1990’s, as more of a pay TV program. With the retirement of the like of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and the emergence of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal and other stars, the NBA is re-establishing itself."

I asked Zecha about the opening up of the huge market in China, and the staggering potential it presents.

"Anyone who goes into China has to be in it for the long-term. You have to consider what it means to you today, and what it could mean to you tomorrow. No one is making a heck of a lot of money in China right now. What is certain is that they have a huge appetite for sports. But the infrastructure has to be in place, and the government still has things to do to help things along. India is also showing great potential."

Research has shown that China alone has 100 million mobile phone users, a possible boom for content providers, a new field that ESPN Star is studying to be able to provide their programming to an even wider audience.

The Philippines presents many intriguing possibilities for ESPN Star in the next few years. However, there are some inherent problems for their people on the ground here.

"There are some things that exist that can either guide or impede our progress in the Philippines," Zecha reveals. "We have to solve the piracy, stealing the signal, tapping into the cables. To solve this, we expect greater legislation from the government, better enforcement of the laws, and we are anticipating the introduction of set-top boxes to eliminate these problems. The growth potential could be better than it looks."

And that’s good news for the sports-hungry Filipino fanatic.

* * *

The San Miguel Beermen talk about their losing streak, and Sonny Thoss, Alex Cabagnot and the match-up between James Yap and Renren Ritualo are all on this week’s episode of The Basketball Show at 7 p.m. over IBC-13.