Wednesday, July 3, 2019 – A roundup of some of the key sports technology stories you need to know, including SportTechie’s own content and stories from around the web
- China Sports Zhibo to Stream Le Tour de France Until 2021: China Sports Zhibo has announced a three-year deal to live stream the Tour de France in China from 2019 to 2021. The cycling stage race, which begins July 6 in Brussels and concludes July 28 in Paris, will stream throughout its entirety on China Sports Zhibo’s website. According to Chinese media outlet Sina.com, the deal also includes expert commentary, analysis, and additional racing content to bolster coverage of the event. China Sports Zhibo claims to have 15 million registered users, and it already owns streaming rights to the Table Tennis World Tour, the World Badminton Tour, and the World Federation of Snooker events.
- Manchester United Signs Deal With Game Developer Konami: Manchester United has teamed up with Japanese video game publisher Konami Digital Entertainment to feature in eFootball PES 2020. The latest edition of the Pro Evolution Soccer series features a new and more detailed display of Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium, and all of the club’s players have been digitally recreated using a full-body 3D scanning process. The game also includes a new Matchday mode that allows users to team-up and play in weekly online competitions, which will correlate to real-world soccer matches. An exclusive Manchester United Club Edition of the game will be available at launch, which is scheduled for Sept. 10.
- Global Rapid Rugby Highlights Will Stream Through Corrivium and Blackbird: Live streaming provider Corrivium has partnered with cloud video editing platform Blackbird to clip and publish highlights of the Global Rapid Rugby league. The inaugural season of Rapid Rugby is currently underway, with the league featuring six teams from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and Singapore. Corrivium operates the livestream of all games and will now utilize Blackbird, which runs via Amazon Web Services, to streamline production of video highlights to Rapid Rugby’s website and social channels. Blackbird also has partnerships with sports brands such as the National Rugby League, MSG Networks, Peloton, IMG, and Deltatre.
- AT&T May Offload Regional Sports Networks to Cut Debt: AT&T is considering selling its regional sports networks as part of plans to cut debt by as much as $8 billion by the end of 2019, according to Bloomberg. The four AT&T-owned regional sports networks are AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh, AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain, AT&T SportsNet Southwest, and Root Sports Northwest. The networks own broadcast rights to more than 20 sports teams including the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Houston Rockets, and the Seattle Mariners. The four networks could fetch close to $1 billion, according to Bloomberg. This past May, Sinclair Broadcast Group agreed to buy 21 Fox RSNs from Disney for $9.6 billion.
- MLB Close to Official Data Deals With FanDuel and DraftKings: Major League Baseball “essentially has done deals” to share its official data with FanDuel and DraftKings, according to Kenny Gersh, MLB’s EVP of Gaming and Business Ventures. Gersh made the claims at a Sportradar media brief in London last week. Gersh also said that MLB is “making good progress” on a deal with new sports betting operator Fox Bet. Gersh added that traditional casino operators in Nevada have been more reluctant to pay MLB to use it’s official feed, which imports data from the league’s propriety Statcast system. “There’ll be some that don’t partner with us, and I don’t think they’ll be around that long,” Gersh said.