Pay if you're game

Posted on 3 August 2011 - 04:23am

R. Nadeswaran

IN JUNE, the Information, Communication and Culture Ministry announced a new policy to ensure that popular television programmes, especially popular sports, are not monopolised by a particular broadcasting or media corporation.
Its minister, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim, said that he wanted Astro to create a productive and fair cooperation network with Media Prima and especially RTM. "Those without Astro facilities don't get (TV sports programmes) whereas RTM is a government broadcasting body, and in this matter, I apologise on behalf of the ministry," Bernama quoted him as saying.
While it can be viewed as a brilliant move, the hard truth is that it cannot be done. TV rights for major sports events and even entertainment events like the Oscars and Bafta awards now run into the billions and broadcasting contracts are inflexible because organisations want to milk as much as they can from TV stations. For example, terms of the deal between the English Premier League's tie-up with ESPN-Starsports and Astro are so rigid that they are confined to satellite or cable TV and cannot be re-sold or re-packaged. Therefore, if Astro were to "share" it with anyone else, it would be a breach of contract.
What the organisers hope to achieve by this is to force terrestrial TV operators like RTM and Media Prima to enter into separate agreements and in the process, collect a few more hundred million pounds. This, in a nutshell, is how the system works. The broadcasting rights for last year's World Cup in South Africa were sold in several packages to Malaysian TV stations with the best package – all matches – taken by Astro because they had the money to pay for it. They could not assign or "share" with anyone and the other TV stations had to scramble for the crumbs as they did not have the money for the big games.
The situation is not unique to Malaysia. In the United Kingdom, the BBC has just lost its monopoly to telecast all the F1 races because of budget cuts. BSkyB brokered a deal to broadcast every race, practice and qualifying session live from next year while the BBC will have coverage of just half the races until the end of 2018, meaning British viewers will not have free-to-air access to all F1 races for the first time in the sport's history. There has been speculation for some time that the BBC was set to pull out of F1 altogether for financial reasons with the broadcaster needing to slash its budget by about 20%.
The BBC maintained that it remained committed to providing the best possible sports coverage and retaining the "crown jewels" including Wimbledon, the British Open Golf, the Olympics, the FA Cup Final, the Grand National and the rugby union World Cup. It has been said that BBC "sacrificed" F1 to "save" the Wimbledon.
In response, the BBC said in a statement last week: "We have done this deal with Formula One so that we have more money to be able to spend on keeping other events. F1 will remain on the BBC but splitting the coverage enables us to protect our other television packages. The (British) Open is safely in our hands (with a contract until 2017) and we are as committed as ever to keeping Wimbledon (contracted to 2014) in its entirety."
Barbara Slater, director of BBC Sport, defended the move and said: "With this new deal not only have we delivered significant savings but we have also ensured that through our live and extended highlights coverage all the action continues to be available to licence-fee payers."
Previously, it held the rights to the Ashes Series, which has since been bought by BSkyB and cricket fans have to subscribe to Skysports to watch the matches. On the average, the sports package which consists of five channels cost £20 a month.
With the London Olympics in a year's time, TV rights are already being negotiated and there's no guessing as to who has the resources to pay for the king's ransom as demanded by the organisers. Astro will again be in the forefront unless RTM gets additional allocation from the government.
So, what other choices are we left with? In 1982, the public donated to the "People's Live Telecast Fund" which raised about RM1 million to buy the rights to 12 World Cup matches. Things have changed. These days, for this amount of money, you can't even secure the rights for one match. And of course people would be happy to pay the money to Astro than put their money in a donation box.
There's another route – re-imposing the RM24 annual TV licence fee, but then there will be another big outcry from the people. Call it Hobson's choice but that's the price we have to pay by allowing money to dominate sports. We, the fans are left with no choice but to learn to be subservient to the lyrics of Abba's hit – Money, money, money, must be funny in a rich man's world.
R. Nadeswaran says after sports became a business, money makes the world go round. He is theSun's UK correspondent based in London and can be reached at: citizen-nades@thesundaily.com