China’s state-run national television broadcaster is teaming with two Internet ventures to deal with droves of online viewers who will be watching the Olympic Games.

China Central Television has announced it is working with the MySpace China social-networking site and online-video site Tudou.com to run an interactive Web site for the August Games.

The CCTV site will offer streaming video broadcasts of events, which will be viewable only in China. The Web site of CCTV, the monopoly national broadcaster, draws relatively little traffic.

There is a conflict of interest in all of this.

Around the world Internet users want to view the Olympics. The Web offers new opportunities for advertising revenue, but also threatens to detract from the lock on Olympic viewers long enjoyed by TV. Selling TV rights is the major source of income for the International Olympic Committee.

The IOC didn’t sell audio and video transmissions rights for Olympics competitions over the Web until 2000.

In many markets like the U.S., the IOC now generally offers the Internet and wireless-broadcast rights for the Games bundled with TV rights, but that is beginning to change. An open tender on the online rights in China last year, which was eventually won by CCTV, was among the first.

CCTV’s Olympics Web site will be a dedicated one within CCTV.com, with a video channel supported by Tudou.com, a three-year-old start-up, and a social-networking section supported by MySpace China, which was launched last April in a joint venture with News Corp., the part of the Murdoch empire which is still interested in China.

The Olympics video site — to go live August 8, the first day of the Games — will include live video, playbacks from the Games, commentary and user-generated content. Users will be able to interact with athletes and coaches using the MySpace China part of the site.

However there may be problems regarding exclusivity.

China’s Internet is home to numerous services that illegally broadcast copyrighted TV shows or movies — even whole TV channels.

Christopher Stokes, the chief executive of United Kingdom-based NetResult, which helps companies enforce sports rights, said, ‘At this stage nobody knows who is going to do the work of making sure the videos are legal.’
Source: Wall Street Journal

First we ran the story 75% of tickets unsold in 2nd phase despite high bookings which is directly below this.

Now we show the other side of the story which are that tickets to the 2008 Games are proving to be among the most coveted in sporting history.

Scalpers already are demanding as much as $40,000 a seat for the August 8 opening ceremony, and tickets for popular sports such as basketball, gymnastics and ping pong (a particular Chinese favorite) are going for ten times their face value. The person in our illustration applying for tickets at the Bank of China simply has no chance. None whatsoever.

The demand for the roughly seven million tickets that the Beijing Olympic Committee is putting on sale for the general public comes from inside and out.

One side are Americans and Europeans who have long dreamed of visiting China and think the Olympics will be the right occasion. On the other, middle-class Chinese families who want to watch with pride as their nation celebrates what is widely touted as a coming-out party.

On the domestic market, ticket seekers have been frustrated by long lines and crashing computer systems.

Two rounds of lotteries to buy tickets have yielded far more losers than winners. The disappointed are pleading their case for tickets on Ganji.com, which is sort of the Craig’s List of China. Even previous contestants cannot get tickets. Ji Ting, a 31-year-old former television executive posted an advertisement for the Olympic Star Security Fund, a charity she set up last year to buy tickets for former Olympians. She said, ‘These retired athletes don’t have much money. They’re not good with computers. They won’t stand a chance on their own.’

The charity has so far been unable to purchase a single ticket through the regular distribution network, so is asking the Beijing organizers to donate a few dozen tickets — at least enough to give to one gold medalist from each of China’s 23 provinces.

Officials of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad say the competition for tickets is a badge of success.

Jeffrey Ruffolo, a spokesman for the committee said, ‘The interest level is staggering. It’s way beyond what we saw in the last three Olympics.’

So what is the problem?

First, the organizers set aside nearly three-quarters of the tickets for the domestic market. That means fewer to be distributed abroad.

Second, the problems exist only in hot events.

One Beijing scalper offering tickets to men’s basketball and ping pong, along with the 110-meter hurdles in which Chinese heartthrob Liu Xiang is a contender, said he expected to get at least $2,000 each for tickets with a face value of $110 to $150. His advertisement on Ganji.com reads, ‘If you’re not financially strong, don’t bother me.’
Source: LA Times

With the Beijing Olympic Games 239 days away, BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad) celebrates its sixth birthday.

Liu Jingmin, BOCOG executive vice-president, said, ‘In the beginning, BOCOG had less than 100 staff members, but with the growing workload, we had to move twice, first from Xinqiao Hotel to a more spacious place — Qinglan Plaza in September 2002.’

On July 13, 2002, the first anniversary of Beijing’s bid victory,BOCOG officially published the Beijing Olympic Action Plan, which outlined the promises made in the bid document.

The plan covered such areas as general strategy, the construction of competition venues and related facilities, an ecological environment and city infrastructure, the social environment, and logistics.

In the first three years, BOCOG drew up and implemented a series of plans, unveiled the Olympic emblem of a ‘Chinese Seal, Dancing Beijing,’ dislosed the theme slogan of ‘One World One Dream,’ and revealed the five Fuwa mascots.

From 2003 to 2005, extensive work was done to draw up the competition schedule of the Beijing Olympics. The opening and closing ceremonies, ticket sales, the torch relay and other matters were also put on BOCOG’s agenda.

During this period, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) increased guidance regarding Olympic preparations.

In January of 2006, BOCOG moved again to a new but this time permanent place — the Olympic Tower, designated as the command center of the Olympics in 2008. The body of BOCOG expanded to over 20 departments.

2006 saw attention focused on the core of the Olympics, namely the sport competitions.

BOCOG oversaw the progress of the Olympic venues, the finalization of the sports schedule, ticket sales, recruitment of volunteers, and the staging of Good Luck Beijing sport events to test the venues’ functions and the organizers’ capabilities.
Source: Beijing 2008

China’s two largest websites are having a battle — nothing physical — over Olympic advertising sales rights.

In one corner, Sohu, the Internet content sponsor of the Beijing Games, claims that online ads from other sponsors with the Beijing Olympics logo can only appear on its website. As our illustration shows Charles Zhang for Sohu signed an agreement to that effect in Beijing, in November, 2005.

In the opposite corner Sina says it plans to boost its Olympic content — no law against that — and also its development and marketing to attract all kinds of advertisers. And, of course, most of these will be Olympic advertisers.

Sina and its partners have also contested Sohu’s claim of exclusivity. They say Sohu’s sponsorship only entitles it to create the official website for BOCOG and to use the Beijing Games logo of a running man in its marketing.

Olympic organizers have confirmed Sohu’s marketing rights as an Olympic sponsor, such as its eligibility to use the Olympic logo. It has also promised crackdowns on any company that tries to establish or imply an association with the Games without paying any royalties.

Sina has since toned down its ‘Olympic marketing’ publicity campaign.

Olympic marketing officials have yet to confirm that Sohu.com owns the exclusive rights to carry online ads from other Olympic sponsors.

Sina says it plans to deploy a 450-strong team to cover the Games in Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish and Arabic.

Sohu has dismissed Sina’s strategies. It uses the analogy of ‘a regular army to a small band of guerrillas’ when comparing itself to Sina in terms of Olympic news coverage. That is a pretty dangerous analogy to use. Guerrillas have hammered regular armies many times. Read up on Chinese history to see some star examples.

All of which is reminiscent of the Australian Olympics. Qantas was not an official sponsor. But no Australian can tell you what airline paid for that privelege. All the advertising from Qantas seemed to suggest that it was the official carrier. Without directly saying so to the 3.8 billion viewers who watched the games on television. And the advertisements were pretty much all Qantas.

The official sponsor was Ansett Airlines. Which has now gone out of business. Qantas is the official Olympic carrier for the Beijing Games. Not all of the action at an Olympic Games is of a sporting nature.
Source: China Daily

In almost every area China has the Olympics wondrously well organized. The last two mountains to climb are pollution and language. Something plainly is being done about pollution especially as the world’s press has picked it up as an useful and continuing story. Language is something else again. According to a report issued by Ministry of Education (MOE), China has set strict standards on the use of both Chinese and English in the service industry.

The report showed that China has regulated the Chinese to English translation for such service as washing rooms, restaurants and hotels to help visitors to know where they are and what they are. The regulation also includes ways of translation for Chinese cuisine. A coordination work team has also been established to carry out language training programs.

Statistics suggest that by the end of 2005, more than 4.1 million residents in Beijing had learned foreign languages. That is 30% if the population.

This statement needs to be regarded in the light of the definition of the world ‘learned.’ The writer learned French at school and is a whiz at telling you that his uncle’s pen is in the garden of his aunt. Which is interesting but less than totally useful. So it could be said one has ‘learned’ French without having the faintest idea how to speak it in the real world. So the suggestion that 30% of the population of Beijing has ‘learned’ English may well, on the face of it, be true. That is not to say that they can speak and understand English. At least, not well. This is not true of the younger generation. Young students possibly would be the best bet as interpreters. (In our illustration there is no apparent problem in communication. This encounter happened during a friendly match between China and Queen’s Park Rangers.)

Nearly 200,000 people in 11 businesses such as tourism have received some language training to improve service for the Olympics.A number of books on the English speaking during the Olympic Games and the volunteer service training have been published. The map of Beijing is also published in Chinese, English and French on the official website of the organizing committee for the Beijing Olympics.

Li Yuming, an official with the Ministry of Education in charge of language administration, said that the language usage for the Olympic Games still had problems.

For example, China has two table tennis players Ma Lin and Ma Long.
If you put their given names ahead of their first names, following international practice, their names will appear the same as ‘L. Ma’ which is confusing.

The official also said that translation of the names of places and roads in Beijing also need some regulation.

This will be the one area that will be difficult to get right. Reverse the situation and think of the games in, say, London. And imagine the majority of the visitors are Chinese.

How successful would London be at making sure enough people learned enough Chinese to be useful? Quite so.
Source: JongoNews