Ten ‘picks up 2014 Winter Olympics for $20m’
The Ten Network appears to be on a sports spending spree with the struggling television network reportedly laying out $20 million on the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
According to The Australian Financial Review, the network secured the games over the weekend after the IOC agreed to split them off from the Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro in 2016.
The IOC will now reportedly attempt to sell the networks a sports rights deal consisting of the 2016 and 2020 summer games, along with the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Ten’s latest sports right purchase comes just days after the network reportedly laid out a $500 million bid over five years for the cricket rights.
Is this Delhi 2010 pt. 2 for Ten?
Given how screwed up and disappointing Nine’s coverage of the London 2012 Olympics were, any channel but Nine is fine with me.
Well done Ten. Re-engineering the network was essential and they seem to be doing it boldly. Plus the Winter Olympics seems a steal at $20M and it is much more interesting than its excessive summer cousin, but thats just MHO.
@Shamma, yeah it is, except that the Winter Games > Summer Games > Cth Games
With this and the potential of Cricket, just as well they killed off ONE Sports.
What a ridiculous buy…it is in Russia (bad timezone), will cost more than they expect to make (lost leader) and last time I looked Aussie’s do not feature well at the Winter Olympic’s (lower ratings than normal).
Adds up to a free kick for Seven, Nine and most importantly the IOC. Interesting first move ????
Hi Hampster,
Your calculations must be different to mine. The time difference appears to work in Ten’s favour as far as I can tell.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
So Ten pays $20mil for the rights and depending on their level of coverage can add $5-7.5 for production. $10mil is the figure being thrown around for sponsorship/ads.
By my calculations that means they’ll need to on-sell the subscription rights to Foxtel for $10mil and do some deal with Telstra for mobile for a few mil.
They they’ll only be $5-10mil down for 2 weeks of great tv, roughly in the right timezone and at a perfect rating starting time of the year to promote their new shows and disrupt the others.
Good call in my book and possibly the most proactive thing they could have done.
Well they just need Australia to pick up a few medals and it could be worth it. Who are the Australian winter Olympic hopefuls but lol.