Ordinary Gweilo

From today’s SCMP (subscription required):

The chief executive of the Premier League has defended Cable TV’s coverage of the English game, declaring the switch from satellite broadcaster ESPN/Star a triumph.

"It’s a big success story. A dedicated channel is all you can ask for if you’re running a sports competition," said Scudamore. "It’s great to have Hong Kong Cable as our partner in a fantastic hotbed of interest in the Premier League. The commitment they have shown has been fantastic.

"In terms of hours of programming, the amount of games they’ve taken live, it has been excellent. We couldn’t have asked for more from them."

Can’t really argue with that, though I’d still like to have some pre-match and post-match analysis in English.

I have to say that I didn’t expect that almost every single EPL game would be shown in full by Cable TV (admittedly sometimes several days after the event). If you are really interested in the Premier League (or support a less fashionable team) this is impressive stuff. In fact, you could argue that Hong Kong Cable TV now has broader coverage than Sky in the UK. What Sky are now doing in the UK on Saturdays is to offer one game in full in the early evening, and extended (50 minute) highlights of each of the other games, starting at 10.15 p.m. However, if you want to watch those games in full, you’ll be out of luck.

As far as live coverage is concerned, Cable TV winning the rights has made no real difference. Yes, Cable TV have an early game on Saturday every week, and there is the new late kick-off (5.15 pm in the UK, 12.15/1.15 am HK), but these would also have been shown on ESPN/Star Sports if they had won the rights.

So we have lost the expert analysis that ESPN/Star offered, but gained by having more games shown in full and repeated more often. Is it too much to hope that next time, ESPN/Star might consider a dedicated EPL channel as part of their bid?