Dot-coms begin the battle for real gold

Three leading Chinese dot-com firms have won the right to broadcast events of the 2008 Olympic Games, competing with Sohu.com, a sponsor and original holder of the rights, it was announced in Beijing yesterday.

 The announcement was another move in the heated battle in the Chinese Internet industry before the Games open next month.

The Olympics are bringing huge business opportunities and the potential for surging advertising income for online firms, industry insiders said.

Nasdaq-listed NetEase.com and Sina Corp as well as Hong Kong-listed Tencent (QQ) said they signed with CCTV.com to get the rights to video broadcast the Olympics and to offer video on demand services online.

PPLive.com also obtained the rights from CCTV to broadcast Beijing Olympics content through its Websites, the second online peer-to-peer video sharing platform after PPS' partnership with cctv.com, its operator Shanghai Synacast Media Tech Co announced yesterday.

PPLive, which has over 100 million registered users worldwide according to an AC Nielson survey, was ranked first of all Chinese P2P platforms for user scale and exclusiveness, iResearch said in its latest report.