Daily Lessons from Life 07 May 2010 - DigitalOne - SingTel and StarHub secure World Cup rights

DigitalOne - SingTel and StarHub secure World Cup rights: "DigitalOne 07-05-10 2

Local telcos SingTel and StarHub announced today that they have secured broadcast rights to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and will be offering all 64 matches 'live' on mio TV, cable TV and mobile.

Viewers can also watch the matches for free online.

According to a press statement released by the telcos, all mio TV and StarHub cable TV subscribers will be able to watch the matches in high definition."

Something trivial perhaps in light of the financial market turmoil suffered in the wake of the Greek national debt crisis. Nevertheless it is a piece of news, good one, that had been vexing the many die-hard and incidental fans of the world's beautiful game - football.
Lessons for me are:

1. some people will pay a random to watch something they believed is entertaining no matter what the price may be - as long as they can afford it! I hope that the 2 telcos have not paid through their noses to get the broadcasting right from FIFA, the world's football governing body that had been labeled as greedy and mercenary about extracting the biggest sum of money from Singapore as it had shown it could afford it when one of the telcos paid a record and mind-numbing, logic-defying sum for the mere English Premier League (EPL)!;

2. the funny thing is that one can also watch the SAME live matches of this coming World Cup FREE of CHARGE on the Internet! The quality is just as good! I cannot figure this out but then I am not a business genius. Maybe someone can think better than me!;

3. now that the live telecast is finally settled, the rest of the business world and their respective media owners and advertising agencies, etc will be busy to cook up exciting events, advertisement, etc to, hopefully, sell more of their products and services to the millions of viewers. Never mind the perplexing: 'why do you have to pay millions to get the right to telecast so that viewers can pay and watch when it could have been had for free!'.

May the game begin soon and may the best team that play the beautiful game be the winners! i.e. is it going to be Spain or Brazil? (or even Argentina with Mr. Lionel Messi, the current FIFA World Footballer of the Year'?