RPG set to telecast Copa Mundial Live

KOLKATA: Millions of soccer-crazy fans in West Bengal can finally heave a sigh of relief now that the Fifa World Cup will be available LIVE on their television sets.
On Wednesday evening, a contract was signed between HMA Udyog – the exclusive distributing agency for Ten Sports in India – and RPG Netcom, the largest MSO (multi-system operator) in the state, which eventually paved the way for showing the channel all over the state from Thursday onwards.
(Incidentally, Ten Sports has exclusive television rights for the Fifa World Cup 2002.)
Talking to TNN from Dubai, Chris McDonald, the CEO of Taj Entertainment Ltd (which owns Ten Sports) said, “Both sides (Ten Sports and RPG Netcom) are happy with the deal that has been signed today.�
He, however, refused to go into the details of the contract.
While both sides were noncommittal about the terms of the deal, it is learnt the base subscription price per consumer per month has been fixed at slightly less than Rs 14.
It must, however, be mentioned that the main bone of contention between Ten Sports and RPG Netcom was not concerning the price but over the number of declared subscribers.
It is a known fact that MSOs underdeclare the number of connections they service to evade paying up a large amount of money to the pay channels.
Ten Sports and RPG Netcom refused to comment on this sensitive aspect.
Ten Sports scored another corporate goal on Wednesday by managing to sign a deal with Asianet, the largest MSO in another soccer-crazy state – Kerala.
With this deal, the few remaining MSOs with whom Ten Sports is yet to enter into an agreement in India are InCablenet and Hathway Datacom in Mumbai and Siticable in Delhi and Bangalore.