Television aiding sports development
By Antariksawan Jusuf
JAKARTA (JP): Television and sports have evolved into a mutually beneficial association, and in a developing nation like Indonesia, television sometimes becomes the backbone of sports development.
As an entertainment, sports can attract viewers who become the target for sponsors. And the aim of commercial television is to provide wide distribution for sponsor value. In the end, wide distribution is in tandem with high revenue for stations.
A good example of direct TV-sports relations was reported by SporTVision magazine, which states that an Australian television station has "interfered" in the number of sports for the 1998 Commonwealth Games, to be held in Kuala Lumpur in September.
Normally in a multiple sports competition, the host committee decides the number and variety of sports to be played. And, the magazine states, the Malaysian committee has added cricket and rugby, both popular sports in Australia, to make Australia's Channel 9 pay serious money for the rights to broadcast the Games.
As Indonesia's monetary crisis has encroached on television advertising revenue to the tune of more than 70 percent, sports development is at stake. The semipro soccer league (Ligina) aired weekly on ANteve, and its Division I and II, have been canceled due to the worsening situation.
Indonesia's volleyball league season this year was scheduled to commence in August but has met the same fate. The crisis has forced the Indonesian Volleyball Association (PBVSI) cancel this year's season, PBVSI official Sutardiono said.
This year also saw several foreign coaches, including Henk Wullems (soccer) and Gebhard Gritsch (lawn tennis), pack their bags and head for home.
The deteriorating economy has also forced the Indonesian soccer association, PSSI, to surrender its chance to become the host of this year's regional football championship, the Tiger Cup, to Vietnam.
The lesser-known basketball league (Kobatama) has had to oust its imported players, who pocketed contract fees in dollars, following the slump of the rupiah against the greenback. Luckily, Kobatama is still going.
Basketball is a fine example of how television can support the growth of sports. SCTV took over the Kobatama competition, held as a tournament since 1982, from the Indonesian Basketball Association (Perbasi).
SCTV relaunched it in 1994 as a semipro league. In tandem with broadcasts of the NBA, a formerly second-rate sport basketball league has become one of the country's major sports.
The station provides subsidies to each participating team and to the Perbasi provincial chapter where each match is held -- Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung and Bogor. In an effort to develop basketball here, SCTV has signed a commitment with Perbasi to 2002 worth hundreds of million of rupiah. The station has also organized a university basketball league and high school basketball competition.
ANteve, whose sports scheduling makes up 30 percent of total weekly programming, provides Rp 2 billion ($143,000) in broadcast fees through private enterprise to the Indonesian soccer league.
The station's sports producer, Reva Dedy Utama, said that despite the crisis, ANteve will keep Sunday a sports day by airing sports-related programs from 12:30 p.m. to 1 a.m, Monday.
ANteve, which won Best Sports Program at the 1997 Asian Television Awards, expects Ligina to return in October to help promote the country's national soccer team.
Similar efforts to develop sports are being made by RCTI, with its indoor soccer and boxing, and Indosiar, which airs live professional boxing weekly.
If it wasn't for well-established and popular sports like badminton and lawn tennis, other sports would fail to win the interest of television stations and would barely survive.
In the current situation, subsidizing local sports seems to be a better choice for stations than acquiring imported sports programs. At least, the rights fee and subsidy are set in rupiah.
For the recent World Cup '98, the state TVRI station joined forces with the five commercial stations to tackle the rights fee worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and distributed all the games equally. Each station were entitled to all 64 matches but only 15 went live on each station.
Other imported live sports events are now facing bleak prospects. Soccer fans are unlikely to enjoy the foreign leagues -- the English league (ANteve, SCTV), the Italian league (ANteve, RCTI), the German and Spanish leagues (ANteve), and the German and Dutch leagues (TVRI) -- next season due to the rights fees, which are set in dollars.
If the crisis persists and stations experience further slumps in their revenues, there will be no future for significant sports development in the country.
-- The writer works in a private television.