SBS targets World Cup advertising boost

Australian public-service broadcaster SBS is preparing to ask advertisers for a rate increase due to a strong programming line-up in 2013 and new digital multi-channel strategies to cover the 2014 Fifa World Cup.

Sponsorship packages for SBS’s coverage of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil will be offered to the market in March 2013, with the deals due to start in July. SBS chief operating officer Richard Finlayson said that global sponsors of Fifa, football’s world governing body, would be approached first about the sponsorship packages.

The report added that the SBS2 channel would provide rolling coverage of the World Cup in 2014, supplementing coverage on SBS’s main channel. “We are reviewing SBS2 and we’re going to reinvigorate it,” Finlayson said.