• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, June 1, 2010

Some listeners to this summer's World Cup on radio may hear an announcer gush:

In Chinese, that translates to Donovan, America's breakout star, scoring and propelling his team to victory in soccer's signature event. The Chinese equivalent of the celebrated "Gooooaaaallll!" call would be a product of WorldBand Media, a company that controls all foreign-language rights -- save Spanish -- to radio broadcasts of the tournament, after acquiring them from ESPN.

In the days before the World Cup kicks off June 11 in South Africa, WorldBand is vigorously trying to sign up stations to narrowcast the games to various ethnic communities -- from Chinese in San Francisco to the Koreans in Los Angeles to a pocket of Greeks in Florida.

In addition to the AM stations that have come on board, WorldBand will carry games on the four HD Radio stations it operates that target people with roots in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Talk about niche media -- in soccer terms, this could be the equivalent of a Faroe Islands-San Marino match. But WorldBand believes there is appeal in soccer-mad diasporas -- and money to be made through highly targeted advertising.

The goal is to carry matches on about 15 stations in eight languages. But with North and South Korea both in the tournament, Korean channels would offer a ripe playing field.

"Those are the ones we think have the biggest opportunities," said Brad Herd, vice president of business development at WorldBand.

In addition to L.A., Korean stations in New York and Atlanta will air broadcasts, while five Chinese stations will carry games, some in Mandarin and others in Cantonese. Negotiations are continuing with Greek, Italian, Portguese and Japanese outlets.

Herd said "it's a bit of chicken and egg," with interested stations looking to sign sponsors before acquiring rights from WorldBand.

ESPN's contract for U.S. World Cup rights seemingly covers every electronic medium -- with Spanish-language TV and radio the exceptions. Univision Communications has TV. Radio is managed by syndicator Fútbol de Primera, where Andres Cantor -- known for his "Gooooaaaallll!" outbreaks -- will call the action.

A less prominent aspect of ESPN's expansive agreement gives it rights to carry games in languages from Arabic to Zulu. "It was kind of baked into our deal," said Jim Roberts, ESPN Radio's executive director of affiliate sales. "We were told, 'Hey, listen, we've got all languages except Spanish -- how do we monetize it?'"

But ESPN is set to offer all 64 games for the first time on radio, and Roberts' team has been trying to line up many of its 700 affiliates to carry them. He said ESPN didn't think it had the resources to go market-by-market, language-by-language to search for multicultural opportunities. WorldBand CEO Prabha Selvadurai and his colleagues, including Herd, have worked in ethnic media for some time and have an understanding of market possibilities.

ESPN's Roberts and Herd had served together on industry panels about HD Radio and were familiar with each other. But Joe D'Angelo -- iBiquity's senior vice president of broadcast programs and advanced services, who knew WorldBand well -- helped bring them together last year. The 10-year-old iBiquity distributes the technology powering HD Radio, the medium that is at the core of WorldBand's future.

Launched in 2008, WorldBand so far has a foothold targeting South Asian communities, operating the four HD Radio stations as part of its HumDesi unit. It offers 24/7 programming, mostly in Hindi, on stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.

HD Radio allows FM outlets to provide upgraded sound quality, but also to use bandwidth to offer many other stations, known as "side channels." WorldBand also leases real estate from Emmis in the country's three largest markets and from Bonneville in Washington.

Both ESPN's Roberts and WorldBand's Herd declined to discuss specifics of their deal. But for ESPN financially, it looks to be as insignificant as Brazil scoring in the final minutes to increase a lead to 8-0.

Still, there are other benefits, such as insight for post-World Cup initiatives that ESPN may undertake. "We're helping them do a bit of that and putting a little money in their pocket ... it at least provides some additional revenue and some market research and market understanding," Herd said.

As the World Cup approaches, the Korean stations working with WorldBand are hoping to draft off some of the interest in the South Korean team -- which has grown ever since it shockingly reached the World Cup semi-finals in 2002.

"There's huge anticipation," said Karen Park, president of Asian-American agency TEN Communications.

The Chinese broadcasts will be in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In addition to the potential deal with a Greek station in Florida, Herd said there has been interest from Portuguese AM stations in New England and a Japanese outlet in Hawaii.

He declined to provide specifics about the agreements that WorldBand has made with stations, but said they can include straight fees or some revenue sharing. Stations, however, will not have to bear huge costs, although there are sales and marketing expenses.

But broadcasters can call the action from a U.S. studio by watching the game on ESPN. Stations can make agreements with WorldBand to offer just "home team" games or others as well.

Herd said he did not expect WorldBand to profit much on its World Cup venture, but noted brand- and connection-building opportunities.

Some advertising executives expressed an interest in running spots in the games, looking for micro-targeting and favorable pricing opportunities. Saul Gitlin, an executive vice president at Kang & Lee, said the relatively low cost of Asian radio allows his agency to reach "very large clusters of our audience" with high "frequency and get a message out very heavily."

Yet ESPN must contend with the uncertain appeal of soccer on the radio. A top executive at an Asian-American agency said his company is taking a pass on ad buys. "If you're a real fan, you will find some way to view it instead of listening to it," said Tommy Ng, a vice president at Admerasia.

Perhaps in that vein, ESPN has a deal with AT&T U-verse, Cox and DirecTV to offer matches in Arabic, German, Japanese and Korean on TV. And it will carry games on its ESPN Deportes network in Portuguese.

After the World Cup, WorldBand is attaching its future to HD Radio. It hopes to continue using FM stations' "side channels" to build a portfolio of 50 stations in multiple languages.

Within that group, it could set up quasi-national networks for specific communities, although each station would presumably offer local programming, too. WorldBand's four HumDesi stations have used both approaches, allowing it to attract national advertisers, such as Western Union and Dish Network, while local marketers such as restaurants and Sikh temples have signed on for individual stations.

HD Radio offers WorldBand a chance to build distribution rapidly. Renting space from existing stations for an HD2 or HD3 feed saves operational and other costs.

Figures from BIA/Kelsey show that only 12 HD multicast signals in the country are used for ethnic radio (that does not include Spanish, which has 86 outlets). "There's going to be tremendous potential when you look at some of the major ethnic groups that are not served in their native languages in certain urban areas," said iBiquity's D'Angelo.

Still, while HD Radio programming is ramping up, the opportunity for audiences to receive it appears limited. There are few, if any statistics, on how many HD receivers needed to pick up the programming are in the market -- although car audio systems increasingly have them.

Recent joint research by Arbitron and Edison Research indicated that purchase intent appears low. The survey shows that 7% of respondents expressed "interest" in the product, a figure that has been about flat since 2006. The research also shows that 31% of persons 12 and older have heard or read something recently about HD Radio.

"Both this data and a lot of evidence in the marketplace (shows) the features and promises of HD Radio have yet to motivate the public in big numbers to go out and seek the product," said Larry Rosin, president of Edison.

Still, satellite and cable TV operators have had success attracting customers with programming packages targeting ethnic communities. And Rosin said he could envision a similar dynamic, where people are moved to buy an HD radio -- key for WorldBand.

"Finding programming that someone would actually be motivated to spend the money on an HD Radio for is obviously a great strategy to drive sales," he said.

As for the World Cup, the in-car systems could prompt listenership, in particular, for a Korean station in commuter-clogged L.A. Because of the time difference with South Africa, some games will air during the early morning rush hour on the West Coast.