Archive for the 'Sports' Category

Olympic ad of the day (TBWA)

Published
by
Jason Li
on April 10, 2008
in Art, Commerce, Design and Sports
. 11 Comments

Cool: TBWA’s Olympic ad for Adidas.

Makes sense? I don’t know — yes, there are many people in China and so I’m guessing the theme is something grandiose along the lines of “standing on the shoulder of billions.” But it’s looks a bit like they’re competing somewhere in hell — not my idea of a good brand association. (Would any of my account planning readers like to chime in here?)

Maybe they’re tapping into some sort of macho thing — see my previous post on a GM car ad.

Via the Longyin Review newsletter.

new tech and Olympics: subway TV

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 2, 2007
in Mobile, News, Sports and Television
. 0 Comments

We should really start a list of what new services and infrastructure are being promised for Beijing in 2008 Olympics.  Here’s an interesting one: live TV coverage on the new subway line. The line:

will have a transmitter every 200 meters that can receive
above-ground TV signals, said Ding Shukui, assistant general manager of
Beijing Railway Construction and Management Co. Ltd….The locomotive and the last carriage on the train will be equipped
with receivers that can transmit signals to the eight liquid crystal TV
sets in each carriage,

trying to find the World Cup live in virtual China

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 31, 2006
in Sports, Television, Video Clips and Virtual China
. 7 Comments

Click_here_2Update 6/11: try this.  Go to SMGBB’s World Cup Live site and click on the yellow button that looks like this, which is found in the middle of the Live Channel screen.

Mysee_2It will provide you with a link to the software that will allow you to see the games live, which is provided by Mysee.  Click on the blue button.  I can’t download it since I have an Apple computer and it’s only available for PCs.  So it’s up to you…but give it a try and let us know if it works! 

[original post, 5/31] As tech-savvy football/soccer fans from around the world know, you can find some sporting events broadcast online via downloadable P2P apps (previously blogged here).  Here’s a first attempt to figure out how this will work for the 2006 World Cup.  Will official Chinese sites show video highlights only?  Will others be watching real-time live feeds broadcast peer to peer? For their part, FIFA and Yahoo are offering free online video highlights
available within the hour following the final whistle of each game
(NOTE: except Asia and Middle East, where a 24-hour delay is in place).  There will clearly be a demand during that 24 delay, and it will clearly be met.

Sohu.com and SMGBB.cn, a subsidiary of Shanghai Media Group, have
partnered to provide the online 2006 FIFA World Cup for tens of
millions of Chinese viewers, if not more. Sohu is also the exclusive online media provider of the Beijing 2008
Olympics (talk about a good place to be), and the 2006 World Cup can be
seen as an early dry-run.

Sohu has its so-called "direct feed"  schedule here.  Probably available here, on Sohu’s 2006 World Cup homepage. Meanwhile, SMGBB.cn has its own World Cup page, where you can clearly see the "Live Channel" screen where streams/highlights might be coming. It requires the latest Internet Explorer upgrade.  SMGBB also has this page which seems even more promising but which also requires you to register.  I’m still trying…

By the way, as a measure of how important the World Cup broadcast is in China, 7 out of 10 Chinese report plans to watch it, and it has even been the site of a major, if bizarre, political protest. During the last 2002 World Cup TV broadcasts in China, the SINOSAT satellite feed was hijacked on and off for ten different stations across China over a period of a week. It sounds like something off of Lost–screens flickering, blurry images of Falun Gong literature appearing…Read more here.

From Sohu’s site, this press release:

http://2006.sohu.com/smgbb [will deliver] real-time video highlights
and tournament photos directly to football fans in China. The channel
will feature exclusive World Cup 2006 content including event
highlights, select clips, behind the scene footage in all the 64
tournaments and comprehensive reports - all readily available online
through rich media formats.

Olympics watch on Virtual China

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 22, 2006
in Government, News, Politics, Sports and Virtual China
. 2 Comments

808_days_to_go

link to the English-language official Chinese 2008 Olympics website

The 2008 Olympics watch on Virtual-China.org officially begins now.  Yes, we’re a bit late to the game (see more on years of efforts here), but our focus will, of course, be how 2008 plays out in virtual China, both in Chinese and in English.

A few things we can already say for sure: There will be an explosion of blog posts written by foreign journalists and tourists, adding to the virtual view of China in non-Chinese languages; there will be an explosion of Chinese chatter on the BBS, much of it proud much of it even nationalistic; there will be photo ops and tours and carefully manicured experiences manufactured for the press and tourists; there will be plenty of unscripted encounters between first-time visitors to China and genuinely welcoming Chinese residents which will be blogged and posted and captured on film; and of course, there will be the athletes and competitions themselves, partly experienced via online access of both foreign and Chinese TV broadcasts by audiences around the world. [related update: see recent news on Chinese p2p tech company Mysee and Shanghai Media Group providing streaming feeds of the 2006 World Cup.]

What would be new and possibly groundbreaking: Chinese blogging and BBS posting in English and Chinese on their encounters with foreign media and visitors, a kind of citizen diplomacy that could feed new voices back into the whole heavily mediated extravaganza.   

In the meantime: George Lessard on the Chinese Internet Research listserv points out a Guardian article (caveat: there’s a horrendous registration process to view) on what will sure to be a major part of the story and experience of the 2008 Beijing Olympics: the press and the Chinese government. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists encouraged the International Olympic Committee to raise the issue of how "free" the foreign press will be in reporting during the games.  The IOC did raise the issue, apparently, receiving the standard bland answer from Liu Qi, Beijing’s chief organizer, followed by the take-it-all-back statement: "…just as everywhere else reporters would have to abide by local law."

Chinese online sports feeds: a meeting place of sorts

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on April 2, 2006
in Sports, Television and Virtual China
. 1 Comment

Cctv_sports

I wonder how many non-Chinese speaking sports fans around the world are watching Chinese TV broadcasts of sporting events (especially soccer) online?  One way to watch soccer on the Internet:

Some smart Chinese people have worked out how to use P2P to stream a
live TV signal - and the most watched shows are the Chinese coverage of
live Premiership games. It’s regularly mentioned in most football
mailing lists or forums and there are a few websites promoting it. (link)

PPStream is one application for downloading Chinese TV feeds or watching live on your screen.  Learn how to do it here.

A brief Google search for live online sports feeds reveals a bunch of Chinese TV station websites (CCTV-5, Shanghai Media Group’s gsports, Guangdong TV).  Would love to know more about how these work, if anyone you know uses them.