4/01/2010

A sickly feeling

We paid $350m to $400m to watch English football. And this amount is about 13% of the takings of EPL. Got it? This little piece of rock with a population of less than 4 millions financing the EPL to the tune of 13%! And Hongkong with a larger population, thus more viewership,0 paid less for the rights. Let's try to do the arithmetics. 10% of 4m is 400,000 people. If 10% of the population watch EPL, it comes to $1000 per head. If 1% watches, it will go up to $10,000 per head. Quite a sum for a past time really. Another way of looking at it, 4m people paid $400m while the rest of the world, 6b people, paid $2.6b or less than 50c each. If we take 50% of the rest of the world, it is still less than $1 each. With that kind of money, we can be a major shareholder of EPL.

7 comments:

Wally Buffet said...

Even Einstein is probably scratching his head in amazement.

I wouldn't pay anything, not even 1 cent to watch 20 silly men chasing after one stupid ball around the field. In any event, the whole game is corrupted, rigged and kelonged.

Give me gladiator sports anytime. Two men beating their brains out, now that's what I call "exciting".

Anonymous said...

Take it that SIN pays and sponsors

the EPL can ?

The EPL never point a gun demanding that SIN must buy the Right to watch them mah.

Anonymous said...

Right! There are sensible people still around.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

The EPL must be laughing at the dumb asses who are willing to fork out this kind of dirt money to watch them running around kicking a ball.

Watching football is fun. But paying this kind of money is anything but idiotic.

What the heck, it is OPM, other people's money.

Anonymous said...

Well, many people already said it. We like to wear big shoes. It inflates our ego. We are first world you know. Don't play play hor!

Anonymous said...

1) 350-400m is for THREE years of BPL telecast rights. Your numbers need to divide by three.

2) The real money does not come from home subscribers. It comes from coffeeshops and pubs. Singaporeans are bored stiff, so this is easy money. You do not need to worry about the profitability of Singtel.

2) Not sure where you got the "takings of EPL" but one Old Trafford game will have stadium ticket takings of easily 5 million. Pounds.

3) I suspect your "takings" number came from the sales of overseas TV rights. BPL is popular in Singapore because we are an English speaking country. Like the Angus Ross prize, Singaporeans may be the "top" winners, but we are usually being compared with the likes of Nigeria and Hong Kong, because the other big English speaking countries are not into English rules, be it Literature or football.

4) Lastly, I blame MDA for sitting on their hands for so long till Singtel was forced to make a crazy bid to remain relevant in pay tv. I know because I am a miotv subscriber for two years. The problem is obvious to everybody for years, but MDA is monkey no see, monkey no talk, monkey no hear.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

Hi Anon 12:26,

The numbers I quoted was from a letter to the forum in the ST. Yes it is about TV rights not ticket sales at the stadium.

The figure can be divided by 3. All the figures should also be divided by 3. It is still a very big sum that we a paying vis a vis other people.