A couple of weeks ago when the mighty Manchester United visited Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, I was eagerly anticipating the game at a cafe near my apartment. Over in Indonesia, Astro is the sole provider with the broadcasting rights to the EPL. The Champions League is taken by a separate operator, which I get to watch on Star Sports. The situation is very much like that which Singapore will face come 2009, where Starhub will broadcast the EPL while SingTel gets to show the UEFA Champions League. I would have thought this practice should be considered monopolistic, and if you ask me, downright f*#$&d up!
But I digress. While waiting for my meal to be served, I discovered from the waitor that they could not receive the Live EPL match due to some “problems” with Astro. No way! I could only curse my bad luck that it had to happen on the day of the big match. All I could do was to go back to the apartment to catch the “live” commentary online. Luckily the Internet connection did not fail me. It was only on Monday that I found out what the “problem” was. It seemed like Astro failed to pay some licensing fees to the government… or whatever.
This little issue, though, highlighted the bigger problem of not having options and alternative choices. When you are stuck, there is nothing else to fall back on. Whether it is the EPL broadcasting rights, Microsoft Windows, energy supplies, food, income or government, we should always have a choice. The difference is of course, while some things like the EPL you can do without, others you cannot. The current 2 biggest challenges facing the world today, that will radically change the way we live, are those of alternative energy sources and food supplies. It is looking like a scary future, when there are no clear, inexpensive alternatives available.
On the matter of EPL though, I think the 2 operators should just come together and split the costs of paying for the broadcasting rights, instead of forcing consumers to pay through their noses for it. Come next season, I suspect many subscribers will unsubscribe their football channel and join their friends at the pubs or cafes to watch the matches. No sane person will want to subscribe to both SingTel and StarHub, and especially for SingTel where the matches tend to be held in midweek, played at ungodly hours due to the time difference. No sane person who has limited financial means that is.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Actually Mark I beg to differ, I welcome the competition. I could never understand why it took the government so long to open up the market. We have been held hostage by Starhub for too many years!
I remembered in Hong Kong, for a number of years they had 1 major cable TV provider, i-Cable. Then PCCW decided to jump on the bandwagon and came up with their broadband TV, NOW TV. It was great with the competition since they were both not only fighting to get channel rights, but also consumers, thus costs kept coming down. Our last year in Hong Kong, we paid like S$70 every month for NOW TV and had all the movie channels (HBO, Starmovies, Cinemax, Star Chinese movies, Mei Ah), all the Discovery Channels, Starworld, AXN, Hallmark plus many others. I don’t think you can get that many channels for that value in Singapore.
Sure Hong Kong may have strength in consumer numbers, but Singapore’s population will come close to Hong Kong very soon. Plus it’s early days yet, give Singtel a little more time and they’ll probably catch up with Starhub and give them a run for their money, which means better deals for us, the consumers! I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:13 am
While I wasn’t quite with you on that privacy thingie, I am 100% with you on this. I don’t watch sport that much (except World Cup or Euro Cup) but I think one day, the cable channels may be split.
Gosh … must it be … exclusive?