BBTV budgets Bt1 bn for sports broadcast rights

“International sport tournaments have been one of our strengths for many years. We will continue to keep our focus on this kind of content,” Palakorn Somsuwan, assistant managing director for programme and content/advertising at BBTV, said yesterday.
The company already holds the rights to many tournaments for such sports as soccer, golf and volleyball.
Part of the budget has gone to securing all the rights to broadcast Britain’s Football Association Challenge Cup for six seasons starting next month and the DFB-Pokal or DFB Cup. The FA Cup is considered the oldest association competition in the world and the DFB Cup as the second-most-important national title in German soccer after the Bundesliga championship.
For the FA Cup, AP Honda and Unilever (Thai) Holding are the official sponsors. The official broadcasters are Channel 7 for free TV, Boom Media for cable and satellite TV and Bugaboo.tv online. Unilever will advertise its Vaseline Men products
Fans can access live matches on smart devices via those broadcasters’ mobile applications.
All matches of the FA Cup will be shown by Boom Media and Bugaboo.tv, which are operated separately by BBTV’s subsidiaries, while Channel 7 will show 15 key matches.
Saran Wiruttamawong, managing director of BBTV, said the company also developed entertainment programmes such as TV dramas, which are now produced and broadcast in high definition. This could help improve advertising revenue.
Next year, Channel 7 advertisers can start airing their commercials in HD, which would help them prepare for the conversion to digital terrestrial broadcasting.
BBTV is also eager to win infrastructure, network, service and spectrum-holding licences to control its own digital terrestrial broadcasting service fully across the country. Bidding for the four licences is expected to be the largest investment in 45 years for the popular TV station.
BBTV has run Channel 7 since 1967 under a concession with the Army that expires in 2022.