Broadcast of 2012 London Olympic Games in Singapore

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (a) what are the sports and stages of competition of the 2012 London Olympic Games that will be broadcast on Free-to-Air TV channels; (b) whether the Ministry will consider regulating the charges for paid sports channels to make them affordable to the public; and (c) whether the existing licence conditions on Quality of Service and Consumer Service for Pay-TV operators will be enhanced to improve the coverage and reliability of Pay-TV sports channels.

Page: 353

Assoc Prof Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: Broadcasts of the 2012 London Olympic Games will be available on Free-to-Air TV, Internet and pay TV. For Free-to-Air TV coverage, MediaCorp has earlier announced that there would be 24-hour daily coverage across four channels combined, namely Channel 5 , Channel U , Okto and HD 5 . MediaCorp's other Free-to-Air channels, Channel NewsAsia , Channel 8 , Suria and Vasantham , would also carry Olympic reports in their news bulletins and breakfast shows 8 .

Specific decisions on which sports will be covered and at what times would be matters for the broadcaster to decide. As a Free-to-Air broadcaster, I believe MediaCorp will strive to meet the interests of as many viewers as it can, and make it a priority to give attention and publicity to Team Singapore's participation.

In addition to Free-to-Air TV, the International Olympic Committee has also announced that it would provide live coverage of the London Olympic Games to 64 territories on its YouTube channel free-of-charge, and Singapore is one of the countries. The live stream will have English language commentary, and will include 10 live feeds from 9.00 am to 11.00 pm London time and a 24-hour broadcast of the Olympic News Channel over the duration of the Games 9 .

On pay TV platform, mio TV will be offering 3,200 hours of coverage of the Games across 13 channels, as well as original Games-related programming.

The Member has asked if the Government will consider regulating the prices for paid sports channels. At the moment, Singapore has no competition concerns in the pay TV sector that require intervention in retail prices. MDA is aware that consumers are concerned about the rising cost of sports TV channels, but it is also mindful of potential unintended consequences to price regulation. These include weakening the incentive for pay TV operators to introduce new and innovative services, as well as foreign content providers choosing not to sell to the Singapore market at all.

Consumers may also know that the cost of acquiring premium sports content has been rising across the world, in line with the growing popularity of sports franchises. Just last month, the popular English Premier League sold three years of UK TV rights, covering 2013 through 2016, for £3 billion (S$5.97 billion). This represented a 70% jump from the current three-year deals 10 . Moderation in sports content prices in Singapore and globally will come about once pay TV operators and sports content owners realise that beyond a certain price level, they stand to lose more customers.

As regards the quality of pay TV services, MDA currently ensures that subscribers are provided with a reliable viewing experience through licence conditions imposed on the operators. The conditions include the obligations to provide services at a reasonable quality that meets public expectations, and to maintain and operate an efficient consumer service and provide proper avenues for resolution of consumer complaints. MDA takes a serious view of lapses in the quality of pay TV services, and will not hesitate to take actions against operators that breach their licence conditions. In 2010, MDA fined SingNet $50,000 for its mio TV outage that occurred at around 6.00 am to about 6.00 pm on 1 March 2010 due to a software glitch. MDA is also currently investigating the repeated disruptions in mio TV's live telecast of the English Premier League season finale on 13 May 2012. If investigations disclose that the operator has breached the licence conditions, appropriate penalties will be imposed.

Page: 354