Russian resources received the advisements from NTV-plus company that they no longer have the right to show videos of the most interesting moments in sports competitions (highlights).
This was written by Vedomosti newspaper referring to representatives of some sports sites.
We are talking about the recordings of Russian and foreign matches broadcast rights to which are owned by NTV-plus or any other structure of Gazprom-Media media holding. Now such highlights will be available for viewing only on Match TV and Sportbox resources.
As said Mikhail Demin, the general director of NTV-Plus, the advisements were sent to all sports-related sites, including such big Russian resources as Championat.com, Sports.ru, Sport-Express and Soviet Sport. According to him, the agreements with them will be terminated. However, he did not declare the reasons for such company’s actions.
According to Irina Osadchaya, the representative of Gazprom-Media, Match is putting up a lot of capital in the purchase of rights to broadcast international events, and often they have to pay in foreign currency. Therefore, the replacement of this digital sports content monetization model “based on its fair value” can be explained by the company’s desire to return spent capitals. The company intends to collaborate with partners in future and will soon provide them with updated terms of the joint venture.
Vedomosti’s informers believe that Gazprom-Media” wanted to increase the number of Match TV visitors by moving all highlight to this resource. But, as the head of one large sports site said, at the moment Match TV site’s position is weak compared with the big Russian sites. Thus, according to TNS data for July of this year, all over the country 4 million users at the age of 12-64 years visit Championat.com site, 2.7 million visit Sport-Express site, and only 1.1 million visit Match TV site.
According to Vedomosti’s informers, Gazprom-Media can face some unpleasant moments because of change the monetization model conditions for their content:
- media holding will lose about hundreds of millions rubles that were earlier earned by them by highlights distribution on others resources;
- in future Match TV still will not be able to increase the number of visits due to show of the exclusive highlights;
- this may result in increase of piracy in the sports video content.
It should be noted that Dmitry Chernyshenko, the General Director of Gazprom-Media, stated during the Match TV launching ceremony:
“We are not aimed at the acquiring exclusive rights. Although due to lack of interest from other sites, 90 % of exclusive materials are here. But we do not hold on this exclusive and we are ready to share them. Our strategy is to distribute sports content as widely as possible”.
