Sunday, April 06, 2008
The age long debate or should I say final revelation or to put it in the faces of dumb ass Singaporeans report on the pricing of cable television for soccer has finally arrived. I am so going to enjoy reading the dumb ass Singaporeans replies to this "revelation". It is really the retarded textbook situation that more competition leads to more choices hence lower price that these dumb asses are stuck in. Oh wait, I forgot, these are Singaporeans we are talking about.
This has really been one of my muses whenever I read that Singaporeans are so keen on having a second cable television provider for our tiny population of four to five million. Would we have more choices? Yes, we would, but does that mean more choices? Yes, it would too. Lower prices? Definitely highly unlikely.
With more competition simply means the bidding of the rights to broadcast anything (for this instance sports) will be more intense. When it is more intense, the price of broadcasting would go up. When it goes up, it means that the price that consumers are going to pay will go up too. How come? That is because the higher price would be divided among the same population. With two providers, it means that the pool for each provider to tap into will be smaller too. As a result, the subscription would naturally go up.
The biggest "horror" for the dumb asses is probably that the broadcasting has been split into the two providers showing one competition each. It means that consumers now would have to subscribe to both providers for what they are currently watching via one.
Though I agree with MDA's theory of voting with your remote, this may lead to problems too. Simply that if people are to subscribe less to the providers, the price will continue to spiral up. If demand for it becomes far too low, it may no longer be viable for the providers to even bid for it and broadcast it. Though I would think that the latter scenario is highly unlikely. At the rate that this is going, it appears that the pricing of watching soccer would only go up. Mainly because soccer is one of the main bread and butter of the providers.
The other situation is for the providers to share content. That means that both StarHub and SingTel will broadcast both the EPL and UCL and it will be up to consumers to decide to whom they would like to subscribe to. Of course, this can in theory work, but how viable it is will be another situation. The bigger concern would be would the providers be even willing to share the pie; especially when they have already signed for an exclusive deal.
While that move is unfair in terms of competition between the providers, it may give the consumers the best of deals. But then, when this happens, we would be back to square one because both providers are likely to be seen as working together and maybe seen as price fixing.
The below retarded argument on comparing with Malaysia's price is so dumb that I shall not even bother talking about it. To me, whoever who makes the comparison is really just showing his/her lack of intellect and ability to grasp even the most basic of economic concepts.
What really amuses me is that ST uses Austar as a comparison. This is because the one that provides in the major cities is Foxtel. Austar's main coverage is in the non-metro regions. The biggest and probably only state capital that they provide to is Darwin. Move into Sydney and you cannot subscribe to Austar. Want Austar, move into Broome or Wollongong. Unless of course Singapore is nowhere near the standards or want to be seen as nowhere near the standards of the main state capitals, I would say, please use Austar as a comparison. And yes, just for information, Foxtel fees for the basic package and sports cost around S$71 a month.
The idea of saying that Australia broadcasts the FIFA World Cup on their FTA and using it as an argument is not totally right too. That is because soccer is a poor cousin to the other major sports there. The staples for the sports providers there are essentially the NRU, NRL, AFL and cricket. Even tennis and horse racing is more valued than soccer in Australia. Yes, the last World Cup saw a big jump in interest in soccer as the Socceroos were in it. But can the interest last? Assuming that it does, it would be extremely interesting to see if SBS can continue broadcasting after the next renewal. And yes, I do take note that several matches of the above core sports are broadcast on the commercial FTA. But truth is that the number of matches screened on FTA is nowhere near the number that are on. And the more important matches are either not screened on FTA or delayed.
he spoke at 10:36 am
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