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OpinionLetters

Letters | Why Now TV’s World Cup package ‘early-bird offer’ is no offer

  • Readers discuss Now TV’s business practices, harsh police behaviour, and the Pakistan prime minister’s trip to London

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Fans watch a live broadcast of the opening match of the 2018 Fifa World Cup at an event held at East Point City in Tseung Kwan O on June 14, 2018. Now TV, the World Cup broadcast rights holder in Hong Kong, has drawn criticism for its steep prices for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup packages. Photo: K Y. Cheng
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When the news broke last month that Now TV had acquired the broadcasting rights to the Fifa World Cup in November, there was only one question: was it going to be affordable? If past experience teaches us anything, the answer would be no.

Given that we operate several food and beverage outlets here in Hong Kong – some of which subscribe to Now TV’s Super Sports Pack at HK$8,888 (US$1,100) per month – we contacted Now TV to sign up for its early-bird offer, which is promoted by its sales team as costing HK$48,000 as long as one signs up before the end of this month. We registered our interest for two of our premises.

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But one of its salespeople quickly informed us that we could not take up the early-bird offer because our current subscriptions had less than 12 months to run and, unless we extended the contracts, we had to pay the full price of HK$60,000 per shop. This seemed more than a little harsh in the current environment, given the past two years of lockdowns with reduced hours of operation. Now TV charged us full price for our subscriptions even when we weren’t able to broadcast late-night sports.

Since our commercial leases at both premises expire in 2023, we informed the salesperson that we could not extend Now TV contracts as we could not guarantee we would still be at those locations. Now TV’s response was simply “extend the contract or pay the HK$60,000”.

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On further investigation, it turns out the early-bird offer has a similar “small print” clause for residential customers. To take advantage of the early-bird offer of HK$280 instead of HK$1,080, you need to make a commitment for 24 months and “meet the required increment in monthly subscription fee”.

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