Ordinary Gweilo

There has been a lot of correspondence in the SCMP recently about PCCW’s Now Broadband TV, and specifically their sports channels.  After winning the rights to the English Premier League, PCCW have created a new package of channels, for which they apparently plan to charge HK$218 per month (their current "special offer" for an 18-month contract is HK$178).  In essence, this consists of ESPN, Star Sports and the EPL coverage, plus a few odds and ends.  As the old price for ESPN & Star Sports was (I think) HK$68, you could say that they are charging HK$150 per month for the EPL coverage. 

To be fair, HK$218 is quite reasonable compared to what you would pay in the UK. You would need to subscribe to Sky Sports (£34 per month for live coverage) and Setanta Sports (£10 for the rest of the live games) and maybe BT Vision (£4 for video-on-demand), so the total would be HK$700 or more.  That means that if you are only interested in the EPL, Now TV are offering a better deal, especially as they will have more live games than are available in the UK.

The story is rather different if you are interested in more than just the EPL.  Subscribing to Sky & Setanta would give you access to a great deal more British football (e.g. the Championship and the Scottish Premier League) and many other sports as well.  In Hong Kong, you would need to pay extra (and not all of it is even available) – for example, the cricket channel on Now TV is HK$168 per month (and tends to show matches involving India & Pakistan rather than England & Australia), and if you want Championship and Scottish Premier League coverage you need TVB Pay Vision.  For other sport (including European football) you would need Cable TV as well.

Some ESPN & Star Sports subscribers are complaining because they only want to watch tennis, golf or baseball (or some other sports), and don’t see why they should pay extra for EPL coverage.  Maybe that’s the same reason that I can’t choose to pay for the shows I want to watch on Star World or BBC Entertainment (which wouldn’t cost me very much per month, come to think of it).

I think PCCW may have confused people on this one.  They have been advertising their Now Sports package as having ESPN, Star Sports, Eurosport and Eurosport News, and ‘Now Sports’ (whatever that might be).  PCCW don’t make their own programmes, so they will surely be relying on ESPN/Star to provide the coverage, and it would be bizarre if that wasn’t mainly on the ESPN & Star Sports channels.  So there’s more  bad news for fans of other sports – as well as having to pay more to subscribe to ESPN & Star Sports, it seems likely that there will less time for other sports.

What else do you get?  Well, the two Eurosport channels are almost worthless (not even any live coverage of the Tour de France), and it seems reasonable to assume that the 4 ‘Now Sports’ channels are going to be something similar to the old Cable TV Channel 63 with EPL games being shown in full round-the-clock (for anyone who just can’t get enough of Portsmouth vs. Middlesbro). 

However, this is all guesswork.  PCCW seem to be saying nothing, though I did find this snippet of information about the coverage to be provided by TWI:

TWI’s deal with the Barclays Premier League offers international licensees all 380 matches each season live via satellite, including 92 in HD. It also covers weekly production of a highlights show, a midweek magazine and a Friday night preview programme – 900 hours of production in total per season.

[..] Using Tandberg’s DVB-S2 encoders and encryption system will vastly improve signal and picture quality. Nearly half the matches will be available on two satellites in each region, further improving the resilience of the delivery system.

PCCW also haven’t said anything about any on-demand or HD (high definition) services, both of which will presumably cost extra on top of the HK$218 a month. 

I can see why some existing subscribers to ESPN & Star Sports are unhappy, but once the EPL deal was done I don’t think it was ever going to be possible to avoid paying more.  The smart move would have been to sign up for 2 years at the old rate, though I’d be intrigued to know what happens if you just keep quiet – their normal practice is simply to renew the existing package at the same price, so if you were paying HK$68 for ESPN/Star Sports wouldn’t that just continue?