SHANGHAI : For the first time in Olympic history, events during the Beijing Games will be streamed online in real time.

With a population of about 221 million Internet users in China, this spells good news for website ventures. And some analysts have said it could pave the way for a surge in Internet ad revenues.

CCTV.com, the digital arm of China Television Corporation, which holds the exclusive rights for live online streaming of the events - has given three companies the rights to broadcast the games real time.

They include PPS, China's largest live streaming website, with a total installation of over 350 million users and an average of 60 billion minutes of viewership monthly.

Vincent Xu, President, PPS, said: "PPS is very experienced in broadcasting important games. We have achieved a lot in the past three years. We are the first Internet TV in China and we helped to broadcast the 2006 World Cup and participated in the Asian Games. These experiences definitely helped us partner with CCTV.com to broadcast the games real time."

PPS did not reveal how much it paid for the broadcast rights but is said it will break even by the end of the year.

Mr Xu said: "Our model is like TV stations. We offer content and draw our revenue from advertisements. We will reach a monthly balance of profit and loss by the end of the year. We will break even very fast."

And with the Olympics to draw the eyeballs in, analysts expect PPS' ad revenue to jump quite significantly.

Anson Jiao, Regional General Manger, CRC-Pinnacle Consulting Co. Ltd, said: "I think they can charge the users; there are two ways to profit - one is advertising, the other is to charge users, which is more difficult.

"But with professional operations, PPS can meet more varied demands - then users would be willing to pay that money. I think it's too conservative to say 20 per cent. I think for these 3-4 months, it would be a 50 per cent increase."

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as estimates from China Internet Network Information Centre show that only 11.7 per cent of the Chinese population is currently plugged-in.

With the Internet considered the fourth media besides traditional ones like TV, radio and newspaper, the Internet is poised to see a huge increase in advertising revenue.

Meanwhile, the official broadcasting organisation CCTV.com has cautioned that only authorised websites are allowed to offer video-on-demand and online broadcasts of the Olympic events.

Even local TV stations which have streaming rights for TV are not allowed to transmit the Olympic events on their websites or other mobile platforms.

But some analysts said that clamping down on illegal live-streaming of the events will prove challenging for China, especially if it is posted from overseas.

Mr Jiao said: "Unless somebody from a small website uses his own DV to broadcast the Game, that's uncontrollable. But this won't become large scale. (There are) two ways to control this - one is to control the source, and two is... monitoring departments can shut off those illegal sites." - CNA/ms