Jun 21, 2011
Live Euro 2012 matches for Singaporeans
By Terrence Voon
Euro 2012 friendly football match between Poland vs France. -- PHOTO: AFP
WITH just under a year before the Euro 2012 football championship kicks off in Poland and Ukraine, efforts are underway to make sure that Singaporeans do not miss out on the action.
Both SingTel and StarHub are believed to be keen on obtaining the broadcast rights for the 31-match tournament. If either operator secures exclusive contracts to screen the event, they will be required by the government's new cross-carriage rule to share the live matches with each other.
"If the Euro 2012 rights are acquired exclusively, then they are regarded as qualified content and will have to be cross carried,' said Ms Eileen Ang, head of competition at the Media Development Authority (MDA).
"This means that the pay-TV retailer who holds the exclusive rights to a piece of content must make it accessible via the platforms of other qualified pay-TV retailers.
The measure does not interfere in the bidding process as this is left to the content providers and pay-TV retailers to negotiate."
The legislation - which kicks in for exclusive deals signed after March last year - was triggered by soaring subscription rates for sports content like the English Premier League, which reportedly cost SingTel $400 million to wrest from StarHub in 2009.
The bidding war is also believed to have inflated the cost of the World Cup deal the following year. This led to a deadlock between Fifa and the two telcos that was only resolved a month before the kick off in South Africa.
