Sunday, August 2, 2009

Telkomvision Takes a Run At Premiership TV Rights



The country’s second-biggest pay-TV provider, Telkomvision, appears to be on course to share rights to broadcast English Premier League football this week after a tender was held last month by the joint owners of the rights, ESPNSTAR Sports and All Asia Multimedia Network.

The rights, which are effective from this month for a year, were offered to a number of pay-TV providers on a nonexclusive basis.

“We submitted our bid earlier this month,” said Bambang Lusmiadi, the marketing director of PT Telkom subsidiary PT Indonusa Telemedia, which owns the Telkomvision brand. “We expect the announcement of the winner sometime this week.”

Lusmiadi said ESPNSTAR and All Asia Multimedia Network had offered Indonusa a share of the rights in June. He acknowledged that the company was interested in acquiring broadcasting rights because of the Premier League’s huge fan base in Indonesia.

He declined to disclose how much the rights to Premier League matches would cost.

“It would help us increase subscriber numbers and to add to our current Italian League matches,” he said.

“However, the rights are not going to be exclusive, meaning that we will have to share them with other broadcasters.”

The exclusive right to broadcast Premier League matches was purchased for $25 million last year by pay-TV provider Aora, which is owned by former Trade Minister Rini M Soemarno, her brother, Ongki M Soemarno, and Vice President Jusuf Kalla’s son Solihin Kalla, who holds a 5 percent stake.

Since 2007, ESPN has allowed some of the Premiership’s games to be broadcast by TVone after a request by the government.

If Telkomvision wins the rights, it would have to share them with Aora, at least initially. Gaby Motuloh, Aora’s corporate secretary, declined to comment on whether Aora would be interested in seeking an extension of its existing contract.

Indovision, the country’s biggest pay-TV provider, said that although it had also been invited to bid for a share of the Premier League rights, it had decided not to do so.

The Supreme Court in June upheld a decision by the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) that ESPNSTAR, AAMN, and Astro, a subsidiary of Malaysian media giant Astro All Asia Networks, were guilty of operating a monopoly in respect to the 2007-2010 English Premiere League rights. Later the rights were transferred to Aora.

“If Telkomvision wins, it will definitely have an impact on the market. But it hasn’t happened yet and we’re still studying the situation,” said Arya Mahendra, the corporate secretary of Indovision, which is owned by Media Nusantara Cipta.

He said that after the rights were awarded to Aora, subscriber migration [from Astro] was not as large as expected.

The country had about 850,000 pay-TV subscribers in 2008, accounting for 2.13 percent of the estimated 40 million households with TVs.

http://thejakartaglobe.com/business/telkomvision-takes-a-run-at-premiership-tv-rights/321716

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