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SingTel cool on World Cup bid following MDA ruling

SINGAPORE — Soccer fans might be in for a nail-biting time in the run-up to next year’s World Cup after SingTel said it might not seek to be the first pay-television company to secure the broadcasting rights for the tournament after its “harrowing” experience with its English Premier League (EPL) contract.

A Singtel shop. Photo:  Nabihah Hashim

A Singtel shop. Photo: Nabihah Hashim

SINGAPORE — Soccer fans might be in for a nail-biting time in the run-up to next year’s World Cup after SingTel said it might not seek to be the first pay-television company to secure the broadcasting rights for the tournament after its “harrowing” experience with its English Premier League (EPL) contract.

The comment by Mr Allen Lew, SingTel’s Digital L!fe Chief Executive Officer, raises the spectre of the uncertainty surrounding the 2010 World Cup: SingTel and StarHub secured a deal for the TV rights to the tournament only 35 days before it was due to start, ending months of worries that there might be no coverage in Singapore at all.

“I’ve got more important things to do in life than to make appeals and continually have discussions with regulators. The World Cup will happen, and if Singapore’s not part of it, good luck!” said Mr Lew.

Earlier this week, the Media Development Authority (MDA) asked SingTel to share the next three seasons of EPL matches with rival StarHub. This was after deciding that the contract which SingTel signed for rights to the matches “contained certain clauses which prevent or restrict or are likely to prevent or restrict the same content from being acquired or otherwise obtained for transmission on selected platforms in Singapore by other pay-TV retailers”.

“This decision, and the way it was handled and communicated, certainly will make us much more cautious about being a first mover,” Mr Lew told TODAY.

He noted that one of the reasons SingTel had pushed for an EPL deal last year was so that football fans would not be left dangling the same way as in 2010.

“Way back in October 2012, we got this non-exclusive agreement signed so that people knew 10 months in advance that at least somebody had EPL,” said Mr Lew.

But this week’s decision by the MDA has left SingTel questioning the merits of adopting a similar approach for the World Cup.

In response to this latest development in the EPL saga, Ms Jeannie Ong, Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations at StarHub, said the company believes pay-TV operators can find a way to work with the cross-carriage measure so long as they play within the rules: “We proved this when we acquired the exclusive broadcast rights for UEFA Euro 2012 and cross-carried the content on our competitor’s platform. Having said that, the World Cup is a year away and we will assess the property when its broadcast rights are available for acquisition.”

Meanwhile, Mr Lew said SingTel has an idea of the estimated increase it has to make to the cost of its sports package, which is currently pegged at S$34.90 a month, if it has to share EPL content. However, he is not ready to reveal that yet: “All we are ready to say is that it will be increased reasonably significantly.”

In response to a question about whether the threat of price increases is being used as a way to pressure the Government to reach a favourable decision in SingTel’s appeal against the MDA ruling, Mr Lew denied that was the case.

“We are just creating awareness among the public that, from a financial perspective, as a listed company, there are certain things that we’re going to have to do … if we are forced to provide services to customers on a competitor’s platform.”

And SingTel remains confident that the strength of its case is strong enough for an appeal against the MDA’s ruling to be successful.

Although confidentiality issues meant Mr Lew was unable to go into details of how the appeal will be framed, he said: “We are reasonably confident that we have a good, solid commercial case that will allow us to put across an appeal that makes sense from our shareholders’ perspective and that makes sense from the perspective of a football fan.”

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