MUMBAI: South African sports broadcaster SuperSport has acquired the television, mobile and internet rights deal with the South African Football Association (Safa).

As per the terms of the agreement, SuperSport has acquired exclusive pay transmission rights in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. It will broadcast all home and away ?friendly? matches which the South African national team participate in during 2013.

The agreement also includes pay broadcast rights to other Bafana Bafana (as the South African national team is known as) matches that Safa has jurisdiction over, Banyana Banyana fixtures, men?s and women?s national age-group teams and other Safa content, including development and grassroots football.

The deal commences with the important Bafana Bafana Afcon warm-up fixtures to be played against Norway in Cape Town and Algeria in Orlando on 8 and 12 January, respectively.

SuperSport CEO Happy Ntshingila said, "The World of Champions is very pleased to add Safa?s content to our wide array of football and other sport. This is an extremely significant year for Bafana Bafana and we are proud that our subscribers will be able to support our national team through our exclusively live and high-definition broadcasts.?

Robin Petersen, the new CEO of the Safa Development Agency, added his positive views about the conclusion of the contract: "We have wished, for some time to have our product broadcast by SuperSport, which is a leading and world-class sports broadcaster. The revenue derived from this deal will assist Safa with its development plans and afford substantial further exposure for our brand on the various platforms that SuperSport broadcasts on. l bring these features at virtually no extra cost."

There is an immediate need for local stations to have viewership data across mobile devices in order to determine how consumers are interacting with live mobile TV.

Rentrak has the unique ability to integrate massive amounts of mobile viewing activity with the linear viewing behaviors from a correspondingly massive linear viewing database. This combination will provide a better understanding of how best to incorporate mobile for future campaigns and advertising initiatives.

?Live mobile TV is an emerging medium, so it?s critical that we take the necessary steps to ensure it will scale as traditional TV has over the years. This new data will provide valuable insight into consumers? mobile viewing habits, which will be leveraged to drive continued growth for the ecosystem of devices and applications enabling live mobile TV," said MCV co-General Managers Salil Dalvi and Erik Moreno.

MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) expects to cut down its sports business losses to Rs 700-900 million from Rs 1.48 billion but could fall short of its earlier target of breaking even operationally in the next fiscal.

The depreciation of the rupee has hurt the sports broadcasting business as the content deals are contracted in dollars. Zeel‘s sports business in FY‘12 had been hit by forex losses to the tune of Rs 270-Rs 280 million, even as its revenue for the fiscal stood at Rs 3.93 billion.

Zeel has renewed the South Africa and Zimbabwe cricket telecast rights and three other boards - Sri Lanka, Pakistan and West India are coming up for renewal.

Zeel continues to stick to its early ad guidance growth of 7-9 per cent in FY‘13 for the industry but expects its own performance to be higher than that. In the first quarter of this fiscal, the company‘s ad revenue jumped 18 per cent to Rs 4.47 billion. The ad growth in Q2 could be slightly lower.

Zeel will continue to invest in new content and add more hours of programming. The company has added original content in the second quarter, a major chunk of which is in the weekend programmes. The aim is to up fresh content to 33 hours a week by the end of this fiscal.

Zeel‘s international subscription income should stay flat or have marginal growth while domestic subscription is expected to grow by 14-15 per cent this fiscal.

There has been no significant carriage fee fall but that should see some correction once cable TV digitisation gets implemented.

MUMBAI: Manchester United has teamed up with Germany-based international sports media company UFA Sports to distribute the 2012 pre-season tour to TV viewers across the world.

The Red Devils are travelling over three different continents this summer to prepare for the upcoming Premier League campaign. With stops in Europe, Africa and Asia over a time period of three weeks, Sir Alex Ferguson?s men will compete in interesting friendly matches in sold-out stadiums to get into shape.

Manchester United will kick off the tour in South Africa on 18 July, before flying out to China to face Super League club Shanghai Shenhua in front of tens of thousands of Chinese United fans. In early August, the squad will return to Europe and finish off the tour with matches against teams from Western Europe, including the top match against FC Barcelona.

MUMBAI: The International Cricket Council has amended its management structure which would see the creation of a new post of chairman and water down the powers of president besides scrapping the post of vice-president altogether effective 2014.

Until the end of the 2014 ICC Annual Conference, the role of the ICC President will remain in its current form but from the end of the 2014 Annual Conference it will become ceremonial in nature with a term of only one year.

The term of office of the chairman will be two years. The ICC Board will appoint the chairman at its first meeting following the 2014 Annual Conference.

Meanwhile, Alan Isaac, the former chairman of New Zealand Cricket, was inaugurated as the eighth President of the ICC in succession to Sharad Pawar. Isaac will serve for a two-year term.

David Richardson was confirmed by the Conference as successor to Haroon Lorgat, who stood down after four years, as the ICC Chief Executive. Richardson, who played 42 Tests for South Africa, has been ICC?s GM- Cricket for the last 10 years.

Additionally, Russia and Hungary were confirmed as new affiliate members of the ICC but Switzerland was removed as an affiliate member, having been suspended at the 2011 Annual Conference for failing to comply with the ICC?s membership criteria and remaining unable to do so by the 2012 Annual Conference.

There are now 106 Members of the ICC.