Will Canal+ stop incurring losses in Vietnam?

April 26, 2016 | 14:08

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Yesterday, Canal+ Group’s Vietnamese subsidiary, Vietnam Satellite Digital Television (VSTV), announced the completion of the purchase of the broadcasting rights of the English Premier League (EPL) for the 2016-2019 period.

Specifically, the company has bought from MP&Silva the right to broadcast all three seasons, with 380 games each. Its payTV package K+ is going to exclusively broadcast some games during the weekends and one game on weekdays, on both SD and HD. Other payTV operators, such as VTVCab, MyTV, Viettel, FPT, and Hanoicab, can buy the right from VSTV.

In March, K+ decreased its subscriber fee from VND230,000 ($10.3) to VND125,000 ($5.6).

Some estimated that VSTV spent $46 million on the rights, but the company has declined to comment for now. Three years ago, it spent $40 million to buy the exclusive broadcasting rights over games on Sunday and non-exclusive rights to broadcast games on other days in the week.

Earlier ten payTV companies, including VSTV, signed the agreement not to negotiate alone and buy if the price exceeds by more than 20 per cent that of the last three seasons, as well as to create a negotiation committee represented by Vietnam Pay Television Association (VNPayTV). The collective negotiation went nowhere, and VSTV announced its breaking away from the agreement in March, saying that it would have to incur severe losses without broadcasting the EPL.

Besides local and international channels, K+ offers four exclusive K+ channels (K+1, K+NS, K+PM, K+PC) produced by Canal+ Group. K+ has more than 2,800 points of sale and 13 proprietary K+ STORE boutiques. As of December 31, 2015, K+ had 804,000 subscribers.

In 2015, K+’s revenue was €51 million ($57.5 million), up 29.3 per cent on-year. The accumulated loss at the end of 2015 was VND1.98 trillion ($88.8 million). In 2015, for the first time, K+ co-produced five Vietnamese films.

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