Football on Pay TV

I am glad that Singtel and Starhub are working together on a joint bid for FIFA World Cup. I hope that they can reach an agreement with FIFA so that the World Cup can be broadcast to Singapore homes through both platforms. That would be good for soccer fans in Singapore.

If the operators and FIFA cannot agree on a fixed price,  I suggest that they work on a percentage sharing of the revenue from each subscriber or an agreed amount per subscriber (to be paid to FIFA).

Perhaps, Singtel and Starhub can get together to discuss how to make the English Premier League available to many homes who are cuurrently on Starhub. Starhub has offered to do the broadcast for free. I hope that Singtel will take up this offer. It will avoid the pain to Singtel of installing so its new set top boxes to many homes, which is likely to cause a lot of technical and capacity issues.

Tan Kin Lian