Tiscali, the leading pan-European Internet communication company, and Dorna, the Spanish-based company that holds the rights for both the MotoGP and Motocross World Championships, have signed a two-year deal.

On the basis of this deal, Tiscali will be the official Internet partner for www.motograndprix.com, the official website of the MotoGP and Motocross World Championships over for next two years. The agreement also includes and exclusive partnership both for narrowband and broadband contents.

Under the technical point of view, Tiscali Business (the division dedicated to the BtoB services) will provide servers, bandwidth and communication lines both for the website’s permanent base and onsite via satellite at each Grand Prix circuit. Dorna, who took over full in-house control of software, design, maintenance and contents for the official website in January 2001, will continue to produce all contents for its current English, Italian, Spanish and French versions. A Japanese site is due to open in the next few weeks.

Under the content point of view, all the narrowband contents of the MotoGP and Motocross World Championships will be available on the Tiscali portals within the beginning of the championships. Users connecting to the Tiscali portals will be able to get access to news, results, inside views as well as interviews of the MotoGP and Motocross World Championships.

Furthermore, Tiscali will have the exclusive European rights to produce a pay per view broadband online channel, realised thanks to its streaming technology know-how for content distribution. The channel, available through Tiscali’s portals and www.motograndprix.com, will feature live races and highlights, videos, interviews, and other exclusive multimedia contents.

Operations will start on March 10th, when a renewed version of the www.motograndprix.com website will be officially launched during the MotoGP testing sessions at Catalunya, Spain, prior to the start of the World Championship in Suzuka, Japan, on April 7th.

Mario Mariani, International Senior Vice President Access&Applications of Tiscali, commenting on the agreement with Dorna, said: ‘This deal with Dorna, with its experience as content producers specialised in motorsport, is a further confirmation of the clear positioning of Tiscali both as technology provider for sophisticated online projects and as a primary online content distribution partner’.

‘Having an Internet partner with the consolidated experience and capacity of Tiscali means a lot to Dorna. The official website has been a huge effort for us in the past two years and we feel that an alliance with Tiscali is the best way to develop it in terms of reaching a broader audience and also in exploring future business possibilities,’ Carmelo Ezpeleta, CEO Managing Director of Dorna said.

DORNA INFO. 08-03-2002
DORNA COMMUNICATIONS
info@dorna.es
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www.motograndprix.com