9 September 2003, Singapore: Nokia and Castrol have teamed up with ESPN STAR Sports (ESS) on the sports broadcaster’s live and exclusive coverage of the new English Premier League season with an interactive and integrated on air and online promotion.
The partnerships not only make the most of the EPL broadcast on ESPN and STAR Sports channels but also extends to the sports news programming ESS produces around EPL matches as well as online on www.espnstar.com and ESS’ China site www.espnstar.com.cn.
Greg Hayes, senior vice president of ESPN STAR Sports’ Advertising Sales and Multimedia Ventures: ‘The Nokia and Castrol partnerships are great examples on how we are taking sports broadcasting to a new level. We’ve moved from merely broadcasting sports events, to producing our own programming around these events and leveraging on our online products to get advertisers across to diverse audiences.’
Nokia Man of the Match
Each week the Nokia Man of the Match SMS contest invites football fans to vote for the Man of the Match for the Saturday and Sunday matches. Those who voted for the player who is also chosen by the commentators as the Man of the Match stand a chance to win a Nokia 3650. The entries are tallied and the winner is chosen on Premiership Saturday for the Saturday match and Super Sunday for the Sunday match. The contest is open to cell phone users in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India, Thailand and Brunei.
Two other upcoming promos from the world’s leading mobile phone supplier include the Nokia Spot the Ball SMS and and online contest on Super Sunday and the Nokia EPL Fantasy League online contest on the programmes Football Focus and Here We Go, all starting in mid-September.
‘Nokia is pleased to be one of the segment sponsors together with Castrol as we view the programme as an excellent way for Nokia to build a stronger brand affinity with sports enthusiasts in Asia. This sponsorship also gives us a great opportunity to communicate the benefits of new technologies such as Java and XHTML to consumers and provides a fun and interactive platform for us to bring the exciting world of techno-tainment to diverse audiences in the region who enjoy watching EPL,’ said Pasi Jarvenpaa, director, Marketing Services, Nokia Mobile Phones, Asia Pacific.
Castrol Goal of the Week
The Castrol Goal of the Week runs across numerous EPL matches and invites sports fans to vote for their goal of the week on espnstar.com. The promo runs through four EPL-related programmes produced by ESS – viewers tune in for the latest news on Football Focus on Tuesday, Goals on Wednesday, Here We Go on Friday to be better informed to pick the Castrol Goal of the Week before the winner with the same choice as the panel is announced on Premiership Saturday. Entries with the same choice as those of the panel may win exclusive prizes from Castrol and a chance to win a framed Castrol football jersey personally signed by football icon David Beckham.
‘The Castrol brand is all about winning, passion and excitement, and the team was searching for a media opportunity to help us drive these values with our core target audience,’ explained AS Ramchander, marketing director of Castrol Asia Pacific. ‘Castrol saw the perfect fit with the English Premier League target across Asia, and we are pleased to team up with ESPN STAR Sports and sponsor the Castrol Goal of the Week segment to reward football fans.’
The drama and excitement of the EPL season began last month live and exclusive on ESS’s two channels, ESPN and STAR Sport. Football fans across Asia once again enjoy coverage of 165 live games and over 1000 hours of EPL programming. In addition, there’s a line-up of support news programming seven days a week with a comprehensive menu of predictions and information and pre-and post-game analysis.
According to peoplemeter data, a single EPL match delivers 25% more viewers than all cable news channels combined. In a week, ESPN (including the EPL matches) delivers 167% more viewers than all three cable news channels combined in the same week. While Asia’s sizeable out of home audience remains unmeasured by in-home peoplemeter measurements, research indicates that 64% watch the EPL outside their homes every week. Over the next ten years, EPL’s potential Asian audience among males 15+ with access to cable and satellite, is expected to grow by 63% from the current 249 million to 407 million. The broadcast of EPL on ESPN STAR Sports is sponsored by Tiger Beer and Toshiba.
Nokia is the world’s leading mobile phone supplier and a leading supplier of mobile and fixed telecom networks including related customer services.
Castrol is the world’s leading specialist and market leader in the production and marketing of lubricants and related products and services.
END
ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world’s leading cable and satellite broadcasters, ESPN Inc. and STAR. We are Asia’s complete sports provider that reaches over 128 million households for ESPN and over 57 million households for STAR Sports (as of June 2003). Our 11 networks are ESPN Asia, ESPN India, ESPN Taiwan, ESPN Philippines, MBC-ESPN (Korea), ESPN Singapore, STAR Sports Asia, STAR Sports India, STAR Sports Taiwan, STAR Sports Singapore and STAR Sports S.E.A. We bring the world’s premier live sports and leading regional events to viewers 24 hours a day. On the ground, the ESPN STAR Sports Event Management Group manages and promotes premier sporting events around Asia, including the Asian X Games presented by Toyota and the Aviva Asian Bowling Tour. On-line, espnstar.com, espnstar.com.cn and espnstar.com.tw interact with millions of users providing them with in-depth sports news, results and competitions. This multilingual, online platform is closely integrated with ESPN and STAR Sports on air networks and has established the sites as the number one on-line sports destination in their respective markets.
For further information, please contact:
Stephenie Vasko, ESPN STAR Sports tel: (65) 6488 6129 or email: vaskos@espnstar.com
Mai Tatoy, ESPN STAR Sports (65) 6488 6134 or email: tatoym@espnstar.com