IT IS a sorry state that Singapore's football fans find themselves in.
Because of SingTel’s quest for pay-TV subscribers, we now have to bury ourselves under more wires, modems and set-top boxes to bring English and Champions League football into our homes.
Because of the bidding war with StarHub that cost SingTel a reported $400 million for Premier League rights, Fifa has decided to squeeze us for as much as it can for the 2010 World Cup.
Negotiations are now at an impasse, raising the real scenario of Singaporeans facing a blackout of football’s biggest event unless MediaCorp succeeds in its last-minute rescue act to telecast some “key matches”.
And the best that the MDA can offer is a statement that it is monitoring the situation.
Even Malaysia can afford a snicker. “The whole world – rich and poor, big and small – can watch the World Cup, but not Singapore, which is one of Asia’s richest countries,” an editorial in The Star jabbed.
At the same time, we have a domestic league that after more than a decade of trying, has failed, so far, to win our collective hearts and minds.
Who's to blame? We are.
It is not the Premier League’s fault that we remain a colony in football terms, nearly half a century after giving Britain the boot in our drive to independence.
Our passion for English football is, at best, misguided. At worst, it is meaningless. We invent ties with the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool, clubs who care only about how many jerseys we buy, how much we can pay to bring them over for exhibitions and how we can inflate their revenue through TV rights, and drive the paypackets of their players to increasingly obscene heights.
It is not Fifa’s fault for milking the market here after seeing how much SingTel were prepared to pay for English football. As Eileen Ang, Head (Competition & Market Access), Media Development Authority, told the Straits Times: “The purchase of content rights such as the World Cup is a commercial decision, and we will let market forces unfold.”
Too bad that the “market forces” have stopped making sense.
In Europe, the sale of football rights are far more regulated and broadcasters are no longer allowed a monopoly.
That did not help broadcasters Setanta who went bankrupt last year because they could not afford their installments to the Premier League.
It was in 2006 when they broke BSkyB’s stanglehold by bidding £392 million for 46 games over three seasons. They secured 1.2 million subscribers, but that was 700,000 shy of what Setanta needed to break even.
The numbers do not add up across both sides of the Causeway.
Astro coughed up RM855 million for the three seasons through to 2013, making sure they beat off competition from Telekom Malaysia.
Analysts are divided on whether Astro, who paid just RM400 million for the last three seasons, will be able to recoup the new amount.
SingTel have already admitted it “will not make a profit” from EPL football rights. StarHub said the same about the last three seasons, for which they reportedly paid $250 million.
Said Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Adeel Najam: “The MDA should have stepped in and got SingTel and StarHub to put in a joint-bid for EPL rights, instead of going head to head.
“Of course, the government has to balance the need to show the world that it does not interfere in the free market.
“But it holds shares in both telcos, and could have done more to protect the consumer. Especially since the only one who benefits is the Premier League.”
As for the World Cup, you have to ask why did negotiations start so late? Australia’s SBS Television settled its deal for both the 2010 and 2014 editions in 2006.
The price: US$20 million.
Fifa is reportedly asking the telcos here for nearly $40 million, and that is just for the 2010 tournament.
So what do we do?
We could rail against the injustice of it all and blame the telcos for inflating prices.
Or we could finally decide to shed this blind obsession with the EPL and satisfy our addiction with local football.
Why not? It was not so long ago when Singapore players complained that demands for autographs outside the stadium were causing them to turn up late for training.
That was the time when Singapore fans agonised about Fandi Ahmad’s gashed buttocks two weeks before a Malaysia Cup final more than Liverpool fans here now worry about Fernando Torres latest knee surgery.
Those were the days when we were happy with just one Premier League match on a Saturday.
The S-League has not made it easy.
But we too must give the S-League its chance.
World Cup or no World Cup, we need to wean ourselves from English football, instead of being held ransom to a league that is more than 10,000km away.