15 Jan, 2016 – Le Eco, the Chinese group formerly known as Le TV, has picked up broadcast rights in Hong Kong to the 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. But it is not yet clear how the group will screen the matches in the territory.
The group said that it has acquired rights to all FIFA matches from 2016 to 2018, including the World Cup. It did not disclose how much it had paid for the rights.
Rights to live soccer matches – especially for the biggest championships and the English League — are among the most contested content on Asian TV as the games are capable of generating pay-TV subscriptions and VoD usage. While pay-TV operators would like to show the matches only to paying clients, governments have sometimes intervened to make viewing more widely available. For the 2014 soccer World Cup in Brazil, free-to-air network TVB won the rights for Hong Kong. Some 22 matches were shown free of charge, others were shown only on pay services.
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