Word: formulaic
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...attempt to draw viewers to Premiere, his pay-TV service, Kirch has in the past two years paid more than $2.5 billion for a slice of Formula One racing and the rights to screen live German football matches from Berlin to Munich. But the audiences have failed to appear - big time. The service is currently losing up to $2 million a day. Now, as his empire founders, Kirch has put his Formula One stake up for sale, with pundits predicting he will be lucky to get half his original outlay. Although the rights for soccer World Cups...
...situation is traumatic enough for those networks that put too much faith - and cash - in the ability of football striker Michael Owen or Formula One champion Michael Schumacher to draw viewers. But it's likely to be just as bad for the football clubs, car-racing teams and other sports organizations that have become overdependent on the broadcasting cash. Their costs are going up; their revenue ... well, that's the problem. And in the long run, as pay-TV networks consolidate - they will have no other choice - a two-tier rights hierarchy could develop, even in the same sport...
...still holds a $1.5 billion "put" option - a risk-averse instrument that gives one the right to sell an asset at a pre-determined price - in the business that he could use as leverage to get his hands on any part of the Kirch empire that interests him. Including Formula...
...renegotiated, it would be worth only about 60% of current levels. Figures from across the sports world joined in the chorus of doom. Daniel Beauvois, the ex-ceo of ISL, issued a harsh warning that the same revenue-reduction fate could befall other sports-rights agencies. In Formula One, the fans seem to have sped away: viewing numbers for the motor sport have dropped about 5% since 1999. And both Greg Dyke, head of Britain's bbc, and Gerhard Aigner of uefa, which runs pan-European football competitions like the Champions' League, wondered whether the audience appetite for televised football...
...simply restating an old formula for Middle East peace at a critical moment, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud not only grabbed this week's headlines, he shifted the terms of debate on the troubled region and caused something approaching a diplomatic earthquake felt in Jerusalem, Cairo, Europe and Washington...