The bar biz is never a dull moment. We go from missing kegs to missing barstools - now missing football games. Some of you may remember during World Cup Football time the big chaos over whether or not UBC/TRUE would be carrying the games and if there would be English commentary.
We wrote about that here: Chang Beer and The World Cup.
The gist of the story is that Chang bought out the rights and asked bars to pay some stupid sum of money to be able to show the games with English commentary. Screw that. So most bars went out and installed one of the South African satellite systems so they could show the world cup and all the sports in English with zero intrusion from local issues. If you remember, UBC would pre-empt the games for royal purposes. So most bars thought that after getting the new system they would be home free.
Fast forward to this weekend - funny times are a foot again and we are still trying to figure it all out. Most of the bars use the SuperSport feed which up until this last weekend was a sure thing - pretty much every game in every sport. All good. Even the channel guide at the supersport website listed all the games for Saturday and Sunday.
Kickoff started and suddenly SS3 was showing an old French League game. The channel guide and the satellite guide were still promoting the Premiere game even though the game was not on. This went on for both Saturday and Sunday with SS only showing 2 of the 7 games. What is amazing is that the website has no information regarding this and the channel guide is still not stating that SS will not have all the games.
It seems that many of the countries like Thailand with monopolies like True - have forced the satellite providers to lose some of the games so that they can keep their monopolies intact. From a legal perspective I understand the situation but I hate monopolies. What I don’t get is why SS did not tell people this was coming and why they have not offered apologies for not warning people.
It seems True will have all the games but that is not totally confirmed since they may offer same as PPV only. The same could be true of the Rugby World Cup that is forthcoming as well. For bars it seems the only choice is have both SS and True if one hopes to have all possible games on any given day.
I guess this is just the normal shit that bar owners deal with on a day to day basis when trying to offer their customers the best they can. Karma will get these companies in one way or another.
When Chang pulled their World Cup stunt - places like the Big Mango Bar started selling Beer Lao. I can tell you to this day Beer Lao outsells Chang by a mile. Payback is a bitch.
Last trip to Thailand I felt right at home when I turned on the TV at the Hotel. Movie magic, Super Sports the works.
I reside in Nigeria and rumor has it that SS has lost the rights to the premier league. That could affect Nigeria only.
Have not paid my subscription in two months as my landlord is not running the generator, still got DVD (when there is light):-(
View all comments by DAH
If SS loses some games it will affect everyone who gets their feed is my understanding. So a lot of Africa, Asia and Middle East.
Hope the lights stay on for u!
View all comments by smitty
The following was published in the Punch Nigeria by Multichoice.
Multichoice is the company that runs DSTV (Super Sport) here in Nigeria.
English Premier League
The EPL has devided the rights to their matches into three regions in Africa:
Nigeria, South Africa and Rest of Africa
Further they made another breack down into three packages:
A: 80% of the games
B: 20% of the games
C: 10% of the games
Super Sport was successful in bidding for the B package for Nigeria and Rest of Africa
Super Sport bid 400% more than last year but was only able to obtain the B package.
My guess is that most users in Thailand get their feed from South Africa. No mention was made if for South Africa they were able to get package A.
But then, why is there no 100% (all games) package for Africa?
Should there be further news from “down here” will keep you posted.
View all comments by DAH