Hell! Watching football on TV has become an expensive proposition
The new English Premier League season got underway but not all Thai fans, caught up in the age of high competition in the sports broadcasting industry, can watch the thrills and spills of football like before.
Gone are the days when people could watch Europe’s top football leagues by subscribing to a single pay-TV operator. Now, if you want to do the same, you need to have one, two or even three set-top boxes at home to follow your favourite teams in EPL, Germany’s Bundesliga or La Liga of Spain.
Such a scenario contradicts the conventional wisdom of economics that states customers would benefit from high competition in the market. Rather than help fans reduce the cost of watching top-flight football on television, the arrival of newcomers in the business meant they had to pay more.
It is a tough ask considering that the cost of living is on the rise.
From paying just over Bt1,500 a month not so long ago for all the famous European leagues, it now costs a football fan a combined monthly fee of more than Bt3,000 to see star players such as Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo, Bayern’s Arjen Robben and Liverpool’s captain Steven Gerrard.
Surely, not everyone can afford that and they have to make a tough choice about which league they have to sacrifice. It is not necessary that every fan would choose their most favourite league since they have to take into consideration many factors while picking a company they subscribe to.
It is no longer the question of which league people want to watch most but what they feel is well worth the money they pay for. So, it does not solely depend on the sports content or to be more specific, football league, when it comes to selecting one of the pay-TV operators.
So, it came as no surprise that many preferred not to switch subscription to the EPL’s new broadcasting rights holders despite the fact that the English game is the country’s most popular league. They made the decision simply on the grounds that, if they subscribe to CTH, what do they get to watch other than the EPL. They simply do not know.
CTH’s cause was also not helped by the poor publicity of their services, with its TV advertisement focusing only on the promotional subscription fee while barely mentioning of how to subscribe. For those who did make a subscription, had to face long delays in installing the set-top box at their homes due to the company’s personnel shortage.
CTH admitted that they could finish installation of all the waiting clients by the end of October.
More or less, the change of EPL broadcasting rights ownership was hyped up in what the British media considered as one of the most anticipated EPL seasons for years, given the changes at the management level at the clubs which finished in the top three last term. It looks like it was a false dawn.
