Virgin Media brings a world of sport to its portal

 

Deal with Perform brings more football, tennis, golf and motorsports alongside a better user experience to Sports portal

Virgin Media (NASDAQ: VMED) today announced a deal with Perform that will see news, interviews and action from world leading football, tennis, golf, motorsport and a number of other sports and major events, delivered on demand through Virgin Media’s Sport portal (www.virginmedia.com/sport). Drawn from Perform’s Omnisport.tv Daily Bulletin, the recently launched daily sports news service, the agreement provides Virgin Media access to a range of on-demand clips from the service.

Digital sports specialists Perform, provide video production services for Virgin Media’s football content, including highlights of all Barclays Premier League, Coca-Cola Championship, League 1 and League 2 matches. The partnership now extends Perform’s responsibilities to include the daily operational management, video integration, editorial services and a dedicated content management platform for Virgin Media’s Sports portal.

Alex Green, Managing Director, Portal at Virgin Media, said: “We’re committed to delivering the very best content to our customers and portal visitors. By leveraging Perform’s expertise and resources, Virgin Media will deliver an outstanding multi-sports experience with a wide choice of video content, highlights and editorial.”

Oliver Slipper, Joint-CEO, Perform, said: “We have a long-standing and very successful relationship with Virgin Media and we’ll be working closely with the team to ensure an integrated portal offering. This partnership enables us to further utilise content across Virgin Media’s Sports portal and will help drive brand loyalty and awareness with a compelling sports line-up.”

Perform also manage the Premier League’s site, Chelseafc.com and 80 of the FLi (Football League Interactive) sites.

To find out more about Virgin Media’s products and services visit www.virginmedia.com| or call 0800 052 2525.

Notes to editors

About Virgin Media
Virgin Media is an innovative and pioneering UK entertainment and communications business. For the first time consumers can get everything they need from one company - the UK's only quad-play of TV, broadband, phone and mobile, plus the most advanced TV on demand service, all delivered through its unique fibre-optic cable network.  Virgin Media launched the UK’s first high definition TV service, is the only TV platform to carry BBC iPlayer, and offers a high-specification, HD-ready V+ personal video recorder. Virgin Media is the UK’s largest residential broadband provider, the largest virtual mobile network operator and the second-largest provider of pay TV and home phone.

Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels – Virgin1, Living, Living 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge and Trouble - and is a 50% partner in UKTV which consists of nine channels including Dave, UKTV Gold and UKTV History. sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auction tv.

Virgin Media has been voted the sixth Most Loved Brand in Britain in a Marketing magazine poll, as well as having been voted the Most Trusted ISP Brand 2008 by Reader’s Digest magazine.  The Sunday Times also awarded Virgin Media its 2008 Best Buy awards for broadband and movies on demand.

Virgin Media is the largest Virgin company in the world and has almost 10 million customers.  To find out more visit www.virginmedia.com/presscentre|.

About Perform
Perform is a world leader in monetising sports and entertainment rights in digital media and has been a consistent and renowned innovator since 2000, and a major driving force in the commercialisation of sport and entertainment rights online, on mobile and on TV.

Perform provides a range of user friendly, end-to-end products and services for businesses involved in sport and entertainment rights:

• Services: We provide the platform and tools that enable rights holders to place, manage and monetise their content online and on mobile.
• Channels: We own and distribute branded and white label sport and entertainment channels for broadcast online and on mobile.
• Sales: We sell advertising, sponsorship and content partnerships around sport and entertainment on a wide network of UK and international web and mobile sites.

Perform operates over 200 websites including those for over 80 UK Football Clubs, Cricket Australia, Warner Music, ITV, Turner Broadcasting and works with various rights holders, including The Premier League, Virgin Media and the ATP Masters Series.

www.performgroup.com|

Media contacts

Virgin Media Corporate PR:

Emma Hutchinson
+44 (0) 20 7909 2022
Emma.hutchinson@virginmedia.co.uk|

Perform PR & Marketing Manager

Kim Parker
+44 (0) 7908 522181
kim.parker@performgroup.com|