The great Italian basketball is protagonist of Fall communication for La7. But also Conto Tv is involved in such sport…
All live basket tournaments in the A Series, broadcast on Saturdays on Italian commercial tv network “La7”, are right in the middle of advertising campaign “Se non guardi solo la tv” (If you don't just watch tv) employed for the recent launch of autumn tv schedule.
The faces of Italian basket are Basket Ugo Francica Nava, sports reporter of many of such matches, and Gianmarco Pozzecco, technical commentator. The advert campaign has been issued since 7th October on Italian famous reference sports newspaper “Gazzetta dello Sport” (Il Sole24ore editor), and after that every Saturday on the same newspaper until the end of the year.
So Italian network La7 relies on basket for all of their communication, while in the same match (just to say) we also find “Conto Tv”. Conto Tv, edited by Conto Tv srl, is a recently born Italian pay tv system, which strives to offer an integration of Sat tv and Digital terrestrial broadcasts created by webmasters, so in a way totally new.
After positive experience with Scavolini-Spar Pesaro basket team in EuroChallenge, Conto Tv repeats the same positive experience in the basket of LegaDue. Thanks to the agreement signed by Conto Tv and the New Basket Brindisi Spa, the first basket matches broadcast are:
16th October 2011, 18:15 hours, Enel Brindisi - Giorgio Tesi Group Pistoia;
30 October 2011 18:15 hours: Enel Brindisi - Sigma Barcellona P. G.;
6yh November 2011 18:15 hours: Enel Brindisi - Fileni Bpa Jesi;
13 November 2011 18:15 hours: Ass. Pall. Sant'Antimo - Enel Brindisi.
All such events are broadcast on pay per what you view basis so every match is charged 10 Euro (5 Euro if pre-bought – booking timetable lasts exactly one week ahead of the event, that is the friday before by 19.00 H). It is also possible to buy a pack containing all 4 matches at a discount price, 20 Euro.
Every event is broadcast on Conto Tv platform and available on Sky Italia satellite only for residential subscribers smart cards and on Conax scrambled Smart Cards issued by Conto Tv. Such cards are rechargeable through “Ricarica Conto Tv”, by credit cards on www.conto.tv website and calling the call center of Conto Tv and can be purchaser in several consumer electronics shops and tobacconists through Italy and all points of sale affiliated to Sisal and Lottomatica Italia Servizi.
This subscription television service which also broadcast adult programmes is based on a Conax encryption and therefore compatible with many receivers Conax on-board equipped, just like popular receivers TV Sat.
All broadcasts are effected by Axel solutions for digital automation of TV broadcasting, allowing Conto TV to manage the entire workflow of the station, from playout, ingest, graphics, asset management, traffic and billing, up to logging and IP streaming. All mux equipments are Tandberg's. Most of their broadcasts are received from the organiser of the different championships which take care directly of tv production employing various external services, just like it happens with Basket in which the producer is the “Lega Basket”. These signals are received via satellite and simply rebroadcast again via Satellite.
Italian “Series C” soccer matches, instead, are produced “internally” making use of outsourced professional video services. We'll come back asap to describe the typical production environment involved in such popular broadcasts.
Talking about SKY Italia in their group Sky+Fox the best September audience performance is awarded to Sky Sport 1 (66.264 K spectators/audience average minute) thanks to the live emotions of the new soccer season “Italian Campionato di calcio” and of Champions League. The most followed match was the “posticipo” of Sunday 18 Sept, Milan-Napoli (1.3 million viewers in prime time 21-22 H on Sky Sport1 and other over 600 K on Sky Calcio 1).
In September according to Starcom, Italian digital tv is followed by an average of 30% share total day, over 8 points percent more in respect same period last year. Among the best performance channels, in the right order, Boing, Real Time, Rai 4, but also Sky/Fox.
