Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of Ben Mogil – Thomas Weisel Partners.
Ben Mogil – Thomas Weisel Partners
In terms of sponsorship I know in the past you have talked about you did 172 last year and understandably would likely be down because of the environment this year and you were looking for 150 as kind of a rough target for the year. You sort of sit here at the beginning of August, is that target still achievable as far as you can tell?
Michael Rapino
As we said, we are mildly surprised we are flat year-over-year. We have a 12-month business in sponsorship which people kind of think it is a summer sponsorship business but most of our deals are ongoing. As we are sitting here now I think we will end up slightly below last year. We have some risk and some remaining big deals to close. We think we will get close to it. Right now in context going into the year we are not going to be in the 10%, 20% or 30% decline like most of the advertising businesses. I think we will be flat to 5% down.
Ben Mogil – Thomas Weisel Partners
Flat from the 170 number last year?
Michael Rapino
No. There is two sponsorship numbers. There is $100 million and then there is premium seats which we calculate to get to that full 170. My premium seats are over and done with this year because they are the summer activity. The remaining number we think about as pure sponsorship is $108 million from last year. If you take the premium seats. We are tracking flat to that right now on forecast but we have to close some deals to deliver that.
I would say if you were using the number, I originally said for the year we may be $20 million down. I think we are looking better than that and will probably end up $10 million down.
Ben Mogil – Thomas Weisel Partners
How did the premium, I am guessing the premium seats for the year are largely sold. How did they fare this coming in this economy?
Michael Rapino
Again, we assume they might have been a bigger risk than they were. We would end up, again we are going to end up flat by the time we are down maybe $3-4 million down from last year. Nothing substantial. If you look at our sponsorship there is kind of an international business. Simon Lewis runs that and we are going to grow that business this year substantially. They are just having great success internationally. Mostly because it was a fairly under developed market and they have been able to get the low hanging fruit.
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