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nyone who still thinks that Asport isn’t big business these days should just have a quick gander at the account books.
TV rights agreements into telephone number businesses.
For the last five years he’s been running ISL Productions, the pro- gramme making arm of ISL Worldwide, the sports media and marketing company founded by Horst Dassler (son of Adi ‘Adidas’ Dassler) in 1982.
“They used to do a lot of selling of goods to the main sports federations around the world and Horst suddenly came up with this idea, saying ‘We’re doing all these deals with you... why don’t we actually set up a company to work on your behalf. It’ll be there to make some money, yes, but it’ll also find the best deals for you and do your marketing.’
“Sixteen federations went with him in one go, including the Olympics, the World Cup, the international Amateur Athletics
Association, Fina Swimming... it was quite an amazing chain of events.”
The ISL group itself is split into five distinct companies. ISL Marketing, ISL Licensing, ISL Hospitality, ISL Television (handling TV rights sales) and - since 1995 - ISL Productions.
“When I came here from Sky Sports in 1995, ISL Productions was three people and one dodgy edit suite,” laughs Davis. “We now have ten edit suites and 68 people... the entire ISL group only has a staff of around 500, so we’re one of the biggest component companies.
“We have a turnover of 26 million Swiss Francs in productions alone and offer consultancy as well as programme making and live event coverage. We produce events all over the world. In this building two days a week we have matches coming in from Brazil [ISL Marketing handles all four Brazilian club competitions]. We add
English graphics and English commentary, then pump it out
around the world.”
Working with a company they’ve set up called HBS - Host Broadcast Services - ISL will be producing the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Described by Davis as “a hell of an operation”, it’ll see ISL covering 20 games across two countries, using up to ten more camera feeds per game than at France 1998.
“It’s all about guaranteeing the quality, guaranteeing to broadcasters who’ve bought rights to the tourna- ment everything they need apart
from just the coverage of the games. Instead of just starting our coverage ten minutes before the game our sig- nal will start maybe an hour before the game, so broadcasters will have the option to show pictures of the team leaving their hotel, on the coaches, underground at the stadiums.
“Broadcasters spend a lot of money to be at these games, these events, to do things themselves but they cannot be everywhere. We are. So what we do is build up a much bigger picture of what’s going on as part of
EYE ON THE BALL
EYE ON THE BALL
Let’s take football for instance... “In a two hour show from the last World Cup,” says
John Davis, Managing Director of ISL Productions, “one of the German stations - admittedly when Germany were playing - took something like $10 million in advertising revenue.
“When you consider that they only paid around $5m for the entire tournament, you begin to see the sort of revenue potential football offers.”
Television veteran John Davis knows all about how much money sport can earn, but also how much it costs to cover it well (“France ‘98, for the 12 grounds they used ultimately, cost them around $75 million”).
He started his career at the BBC, moved on to ITV and was at
Sky when satellite
stations turned
cosy small-scale
EXPOSURE • 28 & 29