Mediacorp unable to bring World Cup to Singapore for free due to “substantial costs”
December 18th, 2009 | 
Author: Written by Our Correspondent
Singapore’s sole broadcasting station Mediacorp, which is owned by Temasek Holdings, said that it is unable to bring live telecasts of the next World Cup held in South Africa next year to Singapore due to “substantial costs”.
The World Cup is the largest sporting event in the world with an expected viewership of more than 2 billion people.
Earlier, both SingTel and Starhub had announced that they have yet to reach an agreement with the organizers FIFA for television rights to screen the World Cup in Singapore due to “financial considerations”.
As of today, 202 countries in the world have already penned a deal with FIFA. Singapore remains one of the few countries together with war-torn Somalia which have yet to do so.
Soccer fans have written in to the Straits Times to vent their frustration with many calling on the authorities to step in to exert pressure on the telcos to bring free World Cup telecasts to Singapore.
Faced with mounting public anger, the Vice-President of Network Acquisitions, Joy Olby-Tan wrote a letter to the Straits Times Forum today clarifying that there is “no specific Fifa ruling for any match to be provided free of charge by Fifa to any broadcaster, nor is there a mandate for any match to be aired on a free-to-air basis.”
“Any match carriage is subject to a commercial agreement between the broadcasters and Fifa. Therefore, MediaCorp needs to balance the substantial costs of bringing in the World Cup matches for viewers with revenues from advertisers and sponsors,” he concluded his brief letter.
The term “free telecast” is a misnomer in Singapore because all Singaporeans have to pay a mandatory TV licence fee of about $110 to the government yearly whether one owns a television set or watch locally produced programmes and news on television.
The World Cup will be screened for free in more than a dozen Asian countries as of now such as China, Australia and New Zealand with more following suit next year.
According to Radio New Zealand International, football fans in the entire Pacific region will have uninterrupted and free television coverage of all 64 matches from the World Cup:
“Football fans in the Pacific region will have uninterrupted television coverage of next years world cup in South Africa.
This follows a deal between the Oceania Football Confederation and Fiji’s MAI television to broadcast the 64 matches from the World Cup free to viewers in the region.”
[Source: Radio New Zealand]
The two giant telcos in Singapore – SingTel and Starhub are owned by the government indirectly via its sovereign wealth fund, Temasek Holdings, which is headed by the Prime Minister’s wife, Ho Ching.
Posted in 
Tags: 15 Responses to “Mediacorp unable to bring World Cup to Singapore for free due to “substantial costs””
Loading ...
Alex Tan Allan Ooi AWARE Chee Soon Juan Chiam See Tong Claire Lee David Widjaja DBS Dr Allan Ooi Dr Silviu Ionescu Foyce Le Xuan George Yeo GIC highnote5 highnotes5 Hong Lim Park Jack Lin Xinli Jack Neo Jack Neo affair Jack Neo press conference Jack Neo scandal Josie Lau Josie Lau Meng Lee Lee Kuan Yew Lehman brothers Lighthouse Evangelism Malaysia MAS minibonds Miss Singapore World NTU stabbing Pastor Rony Tan Ris Low Romanian diplomat in hit-and-run Rony Tan S-League Sex silviu ionescu Singapore Tan Kin Lian Thio Su Mien Tiger Woods affair Tong Kok Wai Top 8 Wendy Chong
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
It all about money. If they collected just $20 for that month world cup show. It a big money from whole singapore. Temasek Ho Chin will be laughing.
Airing the World Cup is a very very expensive affair and it would be crazy for Sinkaporeans to ‘think’ that the gahment related entities will spend billions of dollars so Sinkaporeans can watch it ‘free’.
Huge holes needs to be covered and Pay Increase next year needs to be taken into consideration AFTER the GE and these Billions of Dollars are reserved for that!
Having said that, it is NOT DIFFICULT and TECHNICALLY viable for the matches to be ‘relayed’ through a server onto a web site to be broadcast minutes late with some not very difficult setup and robust bandwidth supported servers.
1994 USA world cup was the last time singapore broadcast world cup free-to-air.
with tv advertisement revenue falling and viewership dropping, mediacorp will not be bringing world cup for free. sports shows has already been cut in mediacorp. last time, they have a sports channel but that’s gone. if not for the tv licence fee and generous govt support in terms of advertisement, mediacorp would have close shop long ago with their ultra-conservative, penny-wise pound foolish mgt.
Those self-serving fat cats claim that we are a 1st world nation/city, right? hahaha! what a joke! we will be the only 1st world country that will not have world cup broadcast due to the substantial cost involve.
Some 3rd world countries are able to do it and we can’t. So in reality, are we a 4th world country?
I am a soccer fan but I am angry not because of the fact that there will be not WC broadcast. I can always explore ways to watch the games. I am furious because this is just another episode showing the typical PAP style of doing things these days. If they can’t profit from it they are not interested. They are only interested in milking money from the people. WTF!
Whenever I hear of Singapore is Hub this Hub that, First this and First that, it sort of gets into my nerve!We talk so passionately about wanting to be a Sporting nation,and we are building the best Sports Hub costing $billions,yet, when talk about forking out some loose change to telecast events like the World Cup which comes along only every 4 years,all those in authority shut their big mouth!! My take on the loose change is comparing the amount lost by TH & GIC.
All this craps of hubing is just empty talk when you can’t even promote & substantiate the very thing you are talking about!
Remember, we are in the First Class, First World league, and our ministers are all Elites, drawing $million salary!
Out there more than two hundred odd countries have already
secured TV rights for their own country men FOC!
BTW we are also paying TV licence fee amounting to $110.00
yearly,whilst most other countries have already scrapped theirs!
To those in authority, please stop making a mockery of the whole issue!!It’s not a question of whether you can or can’t. It’s whether you WANT or WON’T!!!
can any kind soul please teach us lesser mortals how to watch football on the net…
anyway, sports is ALL about money now…who cares anymore about passion or pride while playing for the country…
if our dear FTs were not offered ludicrous amounts of money, do you think they will want to play for our country! and where are these FTs now?
Many moons ago, watching World Cup (Football/soccer) on TV was “free” to many people, not only in Singapore but all over the world.
Broadcasting all matches “live” could be expensive but most matches are broadcast live and free.
I am unconvinced that Singapore has to pay extra costs or more than other countries.
Maybe yes, blame it on our “rich country” status and image. First in everything, so we may need to pay more and more.
3rd world countries are showing it for free to their citizens.
What’s the point of boasting of having one of the highest per capita income in the world when the citizens here can’t enjoy for free what 3rd world citizens can.
Even the Philippins, a very poor country whose national sport is basketball, is showing it for free.
These people are really out to squeeze us dry.
Oh no. If Channel 5 doesn’t have, can we still buy Starhub cable to watch? What about all the restaurants and bars, how will they show?
To Sinkapore, technically we can watch a slightly delayed stream online. But it will be terrible terrible quality. Like it will keep hanging and the commentary will be in some foreign language. I hope it it aired on TV.
I have a feeling that a deal will eventually be reached. Remember a few years ago, there was the EPL saga. It was fine in the end, we can still watch football on TV.
probably will be cctv 5 again
Try IPTV. I think it may be possible to watch it over the internet, from ‘Free-To-Air’ broadcast in other countries (like China).
Sorry, I am not a soccer fan, so I am not interested enough to explore.
@S, nop, not necessary be poor quality.
technically, its like this. There is such a thing called TV card for PC, so say someone in Hong Kong owns a really fast connection to the net, 4mbps would be good, better if higher.
Then say again he owns a good server in Hong Kong of course, with plenty of bandwidth.
All he needs to do is to basically record the game from his TV card onto his local home computer and then stream it live to his server.
Technically its as simple as that but of course there are the finer details like setting up the server to stream, the format to record the broadcast in, etc etc etc.
Cpt on Fri, 18th Dec 2009 2:45 pm
“It all about money. If they collected just $20 for that month world cup show.”
You’re right in saying it is all about money. They will probably show it alright. But now before squeezing at least another $40 or $50 from us.
Why are they squeezing us dry??? Don’t they know that it will also scare off their cherished ‘foreign talent’.
Anyone tried calculating how much they earn per year?
Profit 1 = Number of households X $110 / year
Profit 2 = Number of advertisements + Sponsorship / year
plus any subsidy/grant from govt (its supposed to be state media anyway).
Not ’substainable’? Bullshit…
Btw I was wondering can I subscribe to Starhub and bypass paying $110.. I think I can add few more groups (for around additional $10/mth) and get better quality than the $110 i’m paying for each year…
How about they remove mediacorp channels from starhub boxes so that I can skip their channels entirely and avoid paying $110?
Or do I have to remove all TVs from my house in order to do that?
In the first place its crap to pay the $110 when nothing good comes out of it… 99% of the time I’m just stuck to starhub channels or online videos…