By Chua Hian Hou
STARHUB is prepared to lose some money to bring Singapore
football fans the World Cup telecasts, but not too much.
StarHub's chief executive Neil Montefiore on Friday said despite
an unprecedented offer to the event's rights holder Fifa, it has
yet to receive word on whether football fans will be able to catch
the year's biggest sporting event.
StarHub had made a joint bid to Fifa with SingTel. It is not
just fans who are getting anxious. As the June 11 kick-off in South
Africa approaches, the window to do marketing and advertising, the
main alternative for the operators to recoup the costs short of
passing it onto consumers, narrows.
In other words, the World Cup becomes progressively less
valuable to StarHub and its partners as time passes without the
green light from Fifa, said Mr Montefiore.
He was speaking at his first annual general meeting as head of
Singapore's second biggest telco but biggest pay-TV operator. Mr
Montefiore also expressed surprise at how few questions were
fielded at the 45-min long event on Friday.
Of the 80 shareholders who turned up at the event in StarHub's
new office in Ubi, only two asked questions. Last year, 103
shareholders attended its AGM at the Mandarin Orchard Hotel.