Sports wins around the world.

The emergence of sports-dedicated TV networks since U.S.-originated ESPN began in 1979 has seen the value of sports programming grow from some bucks through big bucks to megabucks today.

Fierce battles for sports TV rights among U.K. broadcasters aptly illustrate the point British public broadcaster BBC and its commercial rival ITV had long dominated the sports rights acquisition arena until BSkyB, the upstart satellite TV venture controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, arrived on the scene.

In 1992, BSkyB paid 304 million [pounds sterling] to acquire the broadcast rights to the country's soccer Premier League for its Sky Sports pay-TV network. The average Sky Sports audience size is less than one million, compared with ITV's average six million viewers. But Sky Sports' deeper pockets have left ITV, which today has allocated a comparatively tiny 50 million [pounds sterling] for its annual sports budget, trailing in its wake.

Even the BBC, which has retained rights to the highly prestigious All England Lawn Tennis Club's Wimbledon matches, must envy the huge sums that enable Sky Sports to clinch U.K. rights to the Ryder Cup golf tournament, the rugby league games and a series of international cricket matches -- all live.

To add insult to ITV's injury, ITV sports controller Trevor East recently defected to News International, through which Murdoch controls BSkyB and hence Sky Sports, to become its head of sports acquisitions. The move reportedly made ITV programming boss Marcus Plantin apoplectic with fury as East had firsthand knowledge of ITV's future sports strategy. Professional sports has always been aggressive. But what brought the dirty fighting from the field into the broadcasting rooms? Cash and audience ratings did.

The MIP '93 "Thirty Years of Television" book says U.S. network CBS paid only $50,000 for the TV rights for the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, during 1960.

By 1992, it was paying $243 million for that year's Winter Olympics TV rights. In 1992, the same network attributed its total annual losses to the $1.06 billion it paid for the 1990-94 baseball coverage.

Such colossal sums had, by then, convinced private broadcasters that, through cable and satellite, sports TV could be a lucrative global venture. They also explain the success of Sportel, the international sports TV market that attracted 252 companies and organizations from more than 40 countries last year (see box).

Satellite and cable-distributed ESPN has spread its all-sports services worldwide, as illustrated by ESPN Asia, the multilingual Eurosports, Orbit-ESPN for the Middle East, ESPN Brazil, and Supersport ESPN for sub-Saharan Africa. It is talking to India-based Modi Enterprises about ESPN India and is involved in Sports-i in Japan. Today, ESPN is in more than 151 million homes worldwide.

Sports may be as universal a language as music, but ESPN has been astute enough to realize that audiences' tastes vary regionally. "We promote the understanding of American football, but basketball needs little introduction -- it's been popular in Egypt for many years," said Michael Anthony, channel manager, Orbit-ESPN Sports. "Horse racing is also very popular, due to the Gulf tradition of breeding and racing horses."

Ala' Eddin Abdul Naby, the Egyptian-born National Basketball Association star, added: "Arab viewers also love to see Arab participation and success in the world events like athletics and basketball."

This year, ESPN Asia stopped devoting airtime to U.S. programming targeted mostly at U.S. businesspeople working in Asia. It may boast nearly nine million subscribers, but encrypted ESPN Asia cannot rest on its laurels. Prime Sports, the channel on Murdoch's Star TV satellite network, is hot on its heels, and Star TV, which is not encrypted, reaches about 40 million Asian homes.

With the Chinese preferring table tennis and Indians devoted to cricket, ESPN Asia is being marketed as subregional networks targeting a variety of audiences. These include Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi and English speakers. The move is also welcomed by international advertisers seeking to reach upper income Asian males, as well as Western expatriates.

The "regionalization" of sports services has to compete against national sports channels. In addition to the U.K.'s Sky Sports, the most successful have included DSF (Deusches Sports Fernsehen) in Germany; Teledeporte, the service owned by Spanish broadcaster RTVE, and the cable-delivered Torneos y Compelencias channel in Argentina.

Aware that sports fanatics have yet to quench their thirst for TV programming, several sports services have launched or plan to start second networks. ESPN2, already claiming nearly 20 million subscribers in the U.S., targets a younger audience compared with the original. It also covers extreme sports, such as mountain biking, bungee jumping, sky surfing and barefoot water ski jumping. Press reports indicate that ESPN is planning third, fourth and even fifth channels.

"We launched Sky Sports 2 in August 1994 because it gives us the extra flexibility to show more live coverage," a BSkyB spokesman explained. Germany's DSF and Orbit-ESPN are also considering second channels. Other networks, such as Eurosport, have invested in interactive TV, while Time Warner's interactive cable venture is to launch Sport on Demand, based on its best-selling magazine, Sports Illustrated.

And, as if that weren't enough, there are newcomers planning to enter the scene. China Central Television, the country's only national broadcaster, is planning a sports-dedicated channel. So is Canal 9, the private Argentinean broadcaster. And Nethold, the European pay-TV giant, is to launch Supersport, a Scandinavian service, late this year. All of which can only be good news for sports program distributors such as ISL Marketing, Grand Slam International and Trans World International. They are all, as the song goes, in the money.

RELATED ARTICLE: Sportel Hits High Note

This year marks record-breaking attendance and demand for exhibition space for Sportel, the annual sports market. Pre-show figures for the 6th annual event, scheduled for October 16-19 in Monaco, indicate a record demand for exhibition space, with 80 per cent of the floor space already sold as of July.

First-time exhibitor UFA Film-Und Fernseh-Gmbh (Germany), along with CSI LTD (U.K.), ISL Television/ISL Marketing (U.K.) and Prime Int'l (U.K.), has contracted for triple stands to accommodate the large sales staff. And returning companies including EBU/Eurosport (Switzerland/France), ESPN Int'l (U.S.), ISPR GmbH (Germany) and first-time exhibitor Associate TV Int'l (U.S.) have requested double stands. Among the newcomers exhibiting were APA Firmengrupper (Germany), France Television Distribution (France), Int'l Volleyball Federation (Switzerland) and NBC Super Sports (U.K.).

Also as of July, more than 250 TV sports professionals representing 86 companies from 26 countries worldwide had already registered. Confirmed buyers were from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark Israel and South Africa among other countries.