Pay-TV Football Price War

Situation in brief: Local football fans are getting increasingly intolerant towards the constant price hikes for pay-TV football content. SingTel has secured exclusive broadcast rights to the hugely popular Uefa Champions League and Uefa Cup starting from August next year to 2012. The competitions are currently shown on StarHub’s ESPN STARSports Channels 23 and 24, and fans will have to purchase a new set-top box next year if they wish to follow the two competitions. To receive SingTel’s mio TV service, subscribers need to fork out approximately $117 for the installation charges and a phone modem. They will also need to abide by the regulation that mio TV suscribers must spend a minimum of $16.05 per month. SingTel have not yet finalised the price plans for the sports content but there are already negative responses from the public. Football fans are outraged at this price-war between the two content providers, as they are already paying $26.75 for StarHub’s football content. Many of them also expressed their unwillingness to subscribe to mio TV, with one hoping for the government to step in and regulate the screening of sports content. My take on this: Local football content, considered to be the key genre in pay-TV, has seen various price hikes in the past years. SingTel’s latest coup follows StarHub’s recent unpopular price hike for the Sports Group. The price hike was due to StarHub’s acquisition of the crown jewel of pay-TV – the English Premier League last year. SingTel lost out in that huge bidding-war for proprietary content last year. It is obvious that SingTel is trying to regain market share for pay-TV content with this coup. Some might think that competition will bring about lower prices, but the reverse has taken place instead. Fans are now paying more and more every year for their football fix and this has not gone down well with many of them. They feel victimised as the consumers are now suffering in the name of football and are no longer the winners. SingTel will face an uphill task in attracting these fans. From a marketing perspective, the SingTel acquisition came at a bad timing. Fans are already unhappy with StarHub’s price plans, and acquiring another set-top box means more hassle and learning time for them. Local football fans are already used to turning to StarHub for pay-TV content and it will not be easy to pull them away towards SingTel. Many of them might not see the value in getting another set-top box just for the Uefa Cup and Uefa Champions League as they are not the main focus of football fans here. To worsen the situation, these European games usually kick off at the wee hours of the morning during weekdays. Even though mio-TV’s on-demand feature will allow fans to watch the matches later in the day, one can argue that the adrenaline rush of watching a “live” match will definitely be dampened with a recorded match. Another point to note is that the matches are also not shown weekly, and thus the price per match goes up. Airing games via the Internet and SingTel’s Ideas portal are also incentives that are not strong enough to overcome the financial barrier. Look MDA, this is not what you would call “free market competition”. This is insane and stupid. Free market competition means that the two providers have access to the same amount of content, and thus will be able to battle it out fairly with competitive prices. However, the ongoing fight for exclusive content has driven up prices instead. Instead of fretting over Taiwnaese music videos with lesbian content , could you guys please put things in perspective and solve problems like the ultra bad football content first? Football fans are paying so much for StarHub’s much-hyped Football Channel and all they get are senseless, biased commentaries and constant signals disruptions. I will never forget that day when I missed out a crucial Liverpool goal because of the disruption. Right now, the two content providers should negotiate on how they can share football content so that they can offer competitive prices to viewers, instead of forcing viewers into monopolistic relationships. They should also show more empathy for their customers and think of ways to reduce inconveniences caused by this price-war. For example, the big technical barrier of having two set-top boxes should be looked into, and one possible solution is that the two providers think of a way to devise a common set-top box. And I’m not even touching on that ridiculous Euro 2008 Season Pass introduced by StarHub yet! I pay premium prices and subscribe to the Sports Channel because I want to get ALL the football action, not because I want to pay more and more to get individual “passes” for games like Euro 2008 and the World Cup! ANNOYING. I should never have signed up with StarHub. They will be getting a service-termination call from me very soon. SingNet will also be getting that call once my broadband plan with them ends. Stupid freaking ridiculous prices with uber lousy services.