ART - World Cup Games

Sadoun · #1 (**permalink**) 06-21-2006, 10:28 AM

I was watching a debate about ART's exclusive World Cup coverage for the Middle East.

ART bought the rights from FIFA to rebroadcast the games in ARABIC into the Middle East.

Since ART is by subscription only, 99% of the people in the Middle East and North Africa are not able to watch the World Cup soccer games. They used to watch them free before on their local stations.

There are over 100 million FTA satellite users in these countries. Do you think ART's decision is good?

I don't know the details of their arrangment with FIFA, but if it is to be broadcast only to subscribers, then ART has no choice. But if ART has the choice to rebroadcast FTA or Encrypted, I think they have made a bad decision to encrypt.

They could have recouped their investment through advertisement (to multi-nationals) instead of subscription. Imagine promoting your products to 100 million viewers instead of only 1 million?

WorldCup is like the Superbowl in the USA. But instead of one game, we are talking 64 games.

rainman · #2 (**permalink**) 06-21-2006, 11:45 AM

personaly i think encryption stinks. fta all channels.

T4Runner · #3 (**permalink**) 07-05-2006, 12:59 PM

From what I read, there are alot more FTA channels in Europe and the middle East w/o any encription. We Americans are used to spending the $$$ apparently. Or maybe it's because we can?

boroda1 · #4 (**permalink**) 07-05-2006, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by T4Runner

From what I read, there are alot more FTA channels in Europe and the middle East w/o any encription. We Americans are used to spending the $$$ apparently. Or maybe it's because we can?

There are only 3 countries in North America. Compare it to Eurasia,
you will see one of the reasons, why do they have more FTA.
Also, they have lots of paid TV channels as well, the only freedom is they don't need any special receivers in many cases, to receive just one package, card swap is enough to change a subscription.