Advanced Television

Pay DTT channel for Spain

July 16, 2008

From David del Valle in MadridMediapro, main shareholder in the commercial TV channel La Sexta, is finalising the launch of a pay DTT channel to distribute premium sports events like the European Champions League and matches from the Spanish Football League, among other content, at a monthly fee between E17 and E18. Mediapro expects the Government to change the law to allow pay-TV DTT services as the curent legislation prohibits any pay TV content on DTT networks. "There isn’t authorisation (for these services) but we believe that this will change shorly, since it is a logical option and perfectly viable", said a Tatxo Benet, a Mediapro executive.Nevertheless, the company does not rule out other options. "We are open to selling the (football) matches to other pay-TV operators, such as cable, ADSL operators or even Digital Plus, but we are working on our model to distribute those events through our own pay-TV channel", he added.Mediapro has recently acquired the pay-TV rights to the European Champions League, the Basketball Worldwide Championship in 2010 and to Formula 1, from 2009 to 2013, as well as rights to most of Spanish football teams, including Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, DTT/DSO