Chinese firm LeTV continues its raid on soccer by snapping up Fifa World Cup 2018 rights
Mainland company also announces name change, to LeEco
In the past PCCW paid US$200 million for the English Premier League matches, which was already very expensive. Hong Kong is a small market. How many people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month to just watch soccer?
This follows the ambitious company’s earlier acquisition of English Premier League rights for three years from next season, which reportedly cost more than US$400 million. The company is also negotiating for NBA rights.
The company announced on Thursday it has the exclusive rights to all FIFA World Cup matches from 2016 to 2018, including all qualifying matches and the games in the group stage and knockout stage that will take place from June 14 to July 15 2018 in Russia.
It also announced it has changed its name – to LeEco – to demonstrate the company’s cross-platform reach.
Past World Cup bids required bidders to ensure matches would be available to a wide audience in the region. In 2014, rights holder TVB showed 22 of 64 matches free of charge, with the rest available on its pay-TV service.
LeEco content can be viewed either on TV sets manufactured by the company or via a set-top box wired to TV sets, but penetration in Hong Kong is still limited. It was uncertain how soccer fans who are not LeEco subscribers can watch the World Cup matches, or whether LeEco will partner with other local stations to air the games like it did with Now TV for English Premier League matches.