The Associated Press and STATS LLC to Provide New Online Products for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

The
Associated Press, and STATS LLC, are launching new products –
Summer Games and Summer Games Plus – to help broadcasters, newspapers and Web
sites cover the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

AP members
will continue to receive thorough Olympic coverage as part of their core
service. Called Summer Games, it will include top stories and photos from the

Beijing games on AP’s
text wires and on AP’s Hosted Web platform, which currently services 750 news organizations
worldwide.

AP and
STATS also are offering an exclusive premium service, Summer Games Plus, which
will be available for print, broadcast and/or online use. Customers will be
able to create their own online presentation from feeds, or they may take
advantage of an online hosted platform built and operated by STATS.

Summer
Games Plus will include additional stories, photos, columns, statistical data
and multimedia, as well as certain text content provided by NBC Sports and NBC
Olympics. The statistical data for Summer Games Plus will be more detailed and
in-depth than the core service, and will come via STATS, the leading provider
of sports data.

AP plans
to staff the Beijing Games with more than 300 journalists. STATS also will
complement AP’s coverage with news and features leading up to the games, and
will be on-site in

Beijing
next August. Summer Games Plus begins today and will increase with content as
the games approach.

All of the
services for

U.S.
customers will include video links to exclusive NBC Sports and NBC Olympics
video on NBCOlympics.com. The Associated Press and NBC recently announced that
AP is the exclusive news agency for the distribution of certain text content
from NBC Sports and NBC Olympics and the video links. Customers outside the

United States
will not receive the video links because of international restrictions.

“The
products from STATS and the AP will provide customers a variety of services to
meet their needs for the 2008 games,” said Lou Ferrara, AP’s deputy managing
editor for sports and multimedia.

“STATS’
experience in redistributing and supplementing AP’s top-notch coverage uniquely
position us to help produce this service, and the result will be a
comprehensive Olympic package that any competitive news site would be
hard-pressed to do without,” said Brian Orefice, STATS’ director of news and
editorial operations.

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