Becker to back internet sports venture

Becker to back internet sports venture
Deutsche Presse Agenteur

Munich, August 14: Boris ``boom boom'' Becker is doing what he does best after leaving the tennis world's centre courts -- public relations and marketing.

The three-time Wimbledon champion, who founded his own sports marketing agency after retiring from tennis last year, will act as the front man in a new internet sports platform venture, ``Sportgate AG''.

With its planned debut next month shortly before the opening of the Olympic Games, Sportgate will challenge established web sites like the Kirch Group's Sport 1 and media moghul Rupert Murdoch's Sportal.

Sportgate plans to cover sporting events on a global, National and regional level, including live action photos, with input from leading players, fans and sport clubs.

Becker, whose job among others will be to attract young internet surfers, will be working closely with Helmut Thoma, the managing director of the new venture.

Selection of Thoma as the manager bodes well for the new venture, since he was the mastermind behind the rise of RTL from a humble beginning in the early days of commercial television to Germany's leading free TV channel.

Behind the launch is Pixelpark AG, reportedly the Nation's biggest designer of web sites, which according to the company's CEO Paulus Neef, is prepared to invest 20 million marks ($9 million) in Sportgate this year.

Neef sees ``enormous turnover potential in mass market sports''.

Sportgate AG plans to launch a float on the Frankfurt Stock Exhange's Neuer market index sometime in 2002, meanwhile investing up to 50 million marks in the portal.

Other partners in the web project include the Pixelpark subsidiary venture Park, the Sports Information Service (Sidgln) and the German Sports Association (DSB). The DSB has nearly 27 million members and links 87,000 sport clubs.

Plans call for Sportgate to become and important information source for the DSB members and associations, including news about upcoming events and ticket sales.

Talks are also underway with the online survice Aolgn which boasts 1.5 million members in Germany, and the Cologne-based West Deutsche Rundfunk, the largest member of Germany's public network group.

Revenue is to come from sponsors, and all possible variants of E-commerce on the web, including direct customer marketing of health items and sports products.

DSB president Manfred Von Richthofen describes the new portal as ``a market place for all those interested in sports.'' With Becker's image helping, the organisers anticipate that some two million people will have used the website by year's end.

Forerunners and future competitors for Sportgate on the internet include TV tycoon Murdoch's Sportal, and his media counterpart Leo Kirch. As the main backer of Sportal, the London company scored on the web during the recent European footbal champions, when almost 130 million surfers clicked on to the site. Sportal is also toying with the idea of offshore betting possibilities to internet users abroad.

But Kirch so far has dominated the internet in Germany with his Sport 1 website, whose content contributors include the Kirch Group's sports channel DSF, the Axel Springer publisher, and Sat 1's sports programme ``Ran.'' Sport 1's biggest strength may lie in the Bundesliga, the German football league, whose rights are owned over the next four years by the sports agency ISPR, a Springer-Kirch joint operation.

With the season just getting underway, the Bundesliga will become a sport 1 mainstay.

During July, some 5.6 million visited the Sport 1 web site, an attest to the ongoing popularity of Sat 1. DSF, and Springer's ``Sport Bild'' newspaper.

Lack of access to ``King Football'', by far Germany's most popular sport, will doubtless be the biggest handicap Sportgate will face in coping with its rivals.

Because the Kirch Group owns the rights to the Bundesliga, Sportgate will be limited to coverage of amatuer team matches. Kirch also owns all rights to the World Cup finals in 2002 and 2006, ruling out any coverage by Sportgate.

Sportgate hopes to offset the football handicap by coverage of track and field events, Formula 1 motor racing, skiing, swimming, and relatively minor events such as fencing, table tennis and field hockey.

But the portal newcomer still comes up against the fact that most web rights to other mass spectator Sports have long since gone to rival internet enterprisers.