October 24th , 2006.
PA Sport invests in Australian Sports internet and information company

PA SportsTicker's parent company, PA Sport, has further cemented its position as the world's leading sports information provider by announcing an investment in the premier Australian sports internet and information company, Sportal Australia.

This deal means that PA SportsTicker customers in North America will have access to Sportal Australia's new generation of web-ready products.  In return, Sportal will become the sales agent for PA SportsTicker's US sports content in their home territories of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Under the terms of the deal PA Sport will acquire 33.3% of Sportal Australia to gain the exclusive rights to commercialize and develop Sportal's content and technical products and services outside their home territories of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Sportal has a proven track record of providing applications to display sports content on the internet and on mobile telephones; they have developed and own a world class sports focused content management system, designed to optimise the management and display of live scores and news content for sport on the internet and mobile telephones.  The new investment will allow PA SportsTicker to market these web and wireless services to online publishers and mobile operators in North America.

PA SportsTicker, PA Sport and Sportal Australia also share a common approach to the development of sports information by focusing on sports governing bodies.  PA SportsTicker has official relationships with the major leagues in the US including MLB, NBA and NFL.  PA Sport has become the data partner of choice for many governing bodies including the English Premier League, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the South African Premier Soccer (PSL).  Sportal Australia has been similarly successful with online partnerships with Cricket Australia (cricket.com.au), the AFL (afl.com.au), the Football Federation of Australia (a-league.com.au), the National Basketball Association (nbl.com.au), the AllBlacks (allblacks.com), the New Zealand Breakers (nzbreakers.co.nz), the Australian PGA Tour (pgatour.com.au), Australian Rugby Union (rugby.com.au), and the Melbourne Cricket Club (mcc.org.au and mcg.org.au) amongst others.  Sportal also owns 100% of Champion Data, the official scoring and data provider of the Australian Football League (AFL).

The CEO of PA Sport, Chris Buckley, said "Australia is one of the truly great sporting nations.  As PA Sport is the world's leader in sports information we simply had to increase our involvement in Australia.  Sportal was the natural choice as a partner because no one else can match them for relationships, reputation and innovation."

Chris Mutimer, CEO and Director of Sportal Australia, said "This deal is very exciting for Sportal.  We can bring back to our shores the phenomenal North American sports content output of PA SportsTicker, as well as PA Sport's output across Europe and Asia.  It also allows us to offer technology, tools and systems behind our web and mobile content delivery to a new audience in the United States.  Secondly, we share with PA SportsTicker the same emphasis on quality, speed of delivery and integrity." 

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