SingTel wins exclusive rights to broadcast UEFA
Champions League and UEFA Cup
By Vimita Mohandas, Channel NewsAsia |
Posted: 20 March 2008 1803 hrs
SINGAPORE: Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel)
has won exclusive rights to broadcast UEFA Champions League and
UEFA Cup 2009-2012 on its mobile, internet and mio TV
platforms.
SingTel also plans to stream UEFA Champions League games both
‘live’ and on-demand on mio TV, and the Internet through the IDEAS
portal www.ideas.singtel.com. It
will also offer clips on its mobile service.
Local football fans usually have to stay up till the wee hours of
the morning just to catch the games, due to the time difference as
the UEFA games are played in Europe.
But this won’t be the case now with mio TV’s on-demand
feature.
Mr Allen Lew, SingTel’s CEO Singapore, said: “The flexible mio
platform has the unique capability of offering video-on-demand and
SingTel’s extensive mobile and broadband customer base allows us to
package this content in an innovative way that will certainly
excite the public in Singapore.”
Mr Lew continued: “Based on our research, sport is a key genre that
drives pay TV take-up, and European soccer is a significant driver
for people who subscribe to sport content. mio TV is an integral
part of the services that SingTel provides, and what drives pay TV
take-up is the quality of content.”
The UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup are premier European club
competitions and this content is popular among locals and
expatriates as they feature top soccer clubs from the UK, Italy and
other major European nations.
Meanwhile, UEFA has said that they are excited at the prospect of
working with their new partner, SingTel.
“The commitment they have made to acquire the media rights is
evidence of the tremendous popularity of the UEFA Champions League
and the UEFA Cup in Singapore,” UEFA said.
Meanwhile, StarHub said it did not bid for the broadcast rights for
the Champions league for the 2009 season onwards.
But fans can still catch the action on two cable channels, ESPN and
STAR Sports, which will continue to broadcast the Champions League
till May 2009.
And there'll still be other world class football matches on these
two channels.
These include the FA Cup, England international home matches, and
the Asian Football Confederation Package.
That package includes AFF Championships, Asian World Cup Qualifiers
and Asian Champions League. - CNA/vm
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna/cgi-bin/search/search_7days.pl?status=&search=uefa%20cup&id=336262
song bo? 
