CTH mulls EPL sub-licensing
Cable Thai Holdings (CTH) says it is in talks with leading cable-TV operators and private broadcasters in Cambodia and Laos to grant sub-licence rights to broadcast the English Premier League for three seasons beginning in 2013-14.
CTH is a group of more than 300 cable-TV operators and provides fibre-optic transmission and Internet broadband. The company recently acquired live audio-visual broadcast rights for the EPL in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos for the 2013-14 to 2015-16 seasons.
There will be 380 soccer matches a season.
"The negotiations are expected to be completed in January. We are opening two options for business partners in the two neighbouring countries," chairman Wichai Thongtang said yesterday.
He added that the first option was to grant sub-licence rights to broadcast the EPL alone and another was to grant sub-licence rights along with fibre-optic network installation.
Apart from such regional network expansion, CTH plans to install a fibre-optic network through the properties of Grand Asset Hotels and Property. Wichai also sits as chairman of the board of this real-estate developer.
An analyst at Thanachart Securities said in a report yesterday that the shift in EPL broadcast rights in the coming season from True Visions to CTH would change the pay-TV landscape. In addition, given CTH’s grand plan and the enormous popularity of EPL, this game-changer will weaken TrueVisions’ market position.
The report also predicted that True Visions would face a loss of high-end subscribers who pay for its Platinum and Gold packages to CTH, and downward migration of high-end subscribers to lower-end packages.
True Visions would be also be challenged with rising content and marketing expenses while finding comparable programmes to replace EPL and creating more campaigns to prevent its churn rate from rising.
However, those negative impacts would only be felt fully in the last quarter of next year when CTH starts to broadcast the EPL, according to the report.
