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Zingmobile continues regional expansion. Zingmobile (ASX:ZMG) and ESPN STAR Sports, Asia’s leading sports broadcaster, are pleased to announce their partnership to launch mobileESPN with Celcom, a leading Malaysian national cellular operator with 8 million subscribers. mobileESPN is a mobile sports content service by ESPN STAR Sports, enabling sports fans to follow their favourite sports more closely than ever with content specially delivered via their mobile phones. mobileESPN will operate as a premium content suite with customised original content, in the form of ‘live’ news coverage, in-depth match analysis, breaking news, and top stories, allowing Celecom’s subscribers across Malaysia to get updates and access their favourite sports. Services will be offered by subscription or as Information On Demand (IOD) downloads. With this partnership with ESPN STAR Sports, Zingmobile will provide Celcom a full suite of ESPN STAR Sports content and service applications covering major sports such as football, cricket, tennis, golf, rugby etc, and major sports leagues including the Barclays Premier League (BPL). Mr. Teo Siew Kiet, Zingmobile’s Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are delighted to enter this partnership with ESPN STAR Sports, a brand leader in the huge and growing sports entertainment market. Teaming up with ESPN STAR Sports allows us to offer a full suite of mobile sports content to Malaysian handset subscribers. We will also explore the possibility of working with ESPN STAR Sports in other markets.” “This new business is commencing towards the end of our financial year and will not impact our 2007 profit forecast, but it starts next year on a positive note”. Mr Teo added. “ESPN STAR Sports is one of the world’s top brand names and we are looking forward to partnering with other selected brands. This is a natural extension of our strategy of producing our own proprietary content and a highly effective way of leveraging our existing infrastructure.” Mr Adam Zecha, Senior Vice-President, Affiliate & Multimedia Sales of ESPN STAR Sports said, “Developed with the avid sports fan in mind, mobileESPN enables sports fans to follow their favorite sports in action more closely than ever before. Our objective is focused on serving sports fans, and making sports content available any time and any place through any device. “The potential for mobileESPN is enormous for the Malaysian market. Our partnership with Zingmobile reflects the service's ultimate mission of providing a compelling, differentiated experience combining real-time access to world-class sports content, packaged and delivered to our fans whenever and wherever they want it. Our partnership will offer mutual benefits to both companies and we look forward to this progressive collaborative effort.” Regional Expansion In addition to mobileESPN, Zingmobile’s regional expansion is proceeding as outlined in its Prospectus. Mr Teo added, “We are pleased to report that we have already opened offices in Malaysia and Bangladesh and will shortly open an office in China, allowing us to begin accessing huge new markets.” “By year end we expect to book some revenue in these new markets, and we are making plans to accelerate revenue growth in these markets over 2008 and 2009 as we step up our marketing efforts. We have also signed up a TV airtime agreement in Bangladesh and plan to extend our already successful television game show strategy there” Bangladesh is one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets, with 28 million subscribers as at June 2007. About Zingmobile: Zingmobile www.zingmobile.net was established in 2002 and is a profitable and rapidly growing company headquartered in Singapore that develops and markets mobile content direct to consumers in Asia. Demand for mobile content has been independently forecast to grow at 32% p.a. in Zingmobile’s markets between 2005 and 2010. Zingmobile has billing relationships with a dozen carriers in Asia, and has developed a content library of over 100,000 unique items across 25 applications and services sold over the mobile phone. Over 90% of the Company’s sales are derived from content developed by the Company. The content is marketed through various channels such as print media and television. Zingmobile also produces its own television game shows and receives revenue from the SMS traffic these programs produce. In the last 12 months, Zingmobile has sold its products to over 6 million unique customers. About ESPN STAR Sports ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world’s leading cable and satellite broadcasters. As Asia's definitive and complete sports broadcaster and content provider, ESPN STAR Sports combines the strengths and resources of its ultimate parent companies – Walt Disney (ESPN, Inc.) and News Corporation Limited (STAR) – to deliver a diverse array of international and regional sports to viewers via its encrypted pay and free-to-air services. ESPN STAR Sports showcases an unparalleled variety of premier live sports from around the globe 24 hours a day to a cumulative reach of more than 310 million viewers in Asia. ESPN STAR Sports has 17 networks covering 24 countries, each localised to deliver differentiated world-class premier sports programming to Asian viewers. This includes ESPN Asia, ESPN China, ESPN Hong Kong, ESPN India, ESPN Malaysia, ESPN Philippines, ESPN Singapore, ESPN Taiwan, MBC-ESPN (Korea), STAR Sports Asia, STAR Sports Hong Kong, STAR Sports India, STAR Sports Malaysia, STAR Sports Singapore, STAR Sports Southeast Asia, STAR Sports Taiwan, and STAR Cricket. On the ground, the ESPN STAR Sports Event Management Group manages and promotes premier sporting events around Asia. The multi-lingual, online platforms, espnstar.com, espnstar.com.cn and espnstar.com.tw and footballcrazy.tv interact with millions of users providing them with in-depth sports news, results and competitions. mobileESPN enables sports fans to follow their favourite sports more closely than ever with content specially delivered via their mobile phones. mobileESPN is the first of a regional suite of services to be offered across five markets in Asia Pacific – Airtel (India), Vodafone Essar (India), Indosat (Indonesia), Celcom (Malaysia), MobileOne (Singapore), StarHub (Singapore), PCCW (Hong Kong). Our other multi-media platforms include fully-managed wireless services ranging from SMS/MMS to WAP. For more information, please contact: Ian Brown Channel Financial Communication +61 2 9221 0008 +61 418 466 129 Other Media Contacts: ESPN STAR Sports Elgen Kua Manager, Corporate Communications Telephone: +65-62166 034 Email: kuae@espnstar.com Website: www.espnstar.com |
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