Digital pay TV sparks soccer war
Government's license mandate ignites battle
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Move will allow Mediapro to introduce its long-mooted digital terrestrial pay TV soccer offering, based on the Italian model.
That would be yet another body blow to Prisa, Spain's biggest media group, which is floundering in its attempts to sell satcaster Digital Plus.
Soccer is Digital Plus' main subscription driver, aired via premium and pay-per-view services.
The news hit Prisa's already weakened stock, which has fallen 83.5% to EUR 2 ($2.60) over the last 12 months, driving it down a further 4% on the Madrid bourse.
Mediapro, a controlling shareholder in broadcaster La Sexta, has swept up rights to nearly all First Division clubs in Spain for the next season and beyond.
But it lacks the technological base for subscription or on-demand services. Digital terrestrial pay TV would allow La Sexta to upgrade existing free-of-charge digital terrestrial channels into feevee services.
Digital Plus can still survive Spain's soccer war.
At 2.1 million, Digital Plus still has by far the biggest sub-base of any pay TV operator in Spain.
Added to that, only a small percentage of the set-top boxes required to receive digital terrestrial TV are able to read the smart cards that would allow Mediapro and La Sexta to sell soccer, as Mediaset does in Italy.
In Italy, Rupert Murdoch's Sky Italia paybox has prospered despite Mediaset's launch of cheap pay digital terrestrial soccer services.
In Germany, upstart pay TV cabler Arena snatched rights to Bundesliga soccer matches in 2007. It was never able to run up a subs-base fast enough to justify the investment and ended up selling the rights back to dominant satcaster Premiere in 2008.
