“Foreign broadcasters are not satisfied with such a piracy joke”

Director of TV channel Fútbol 1/2/3 Alexander Denisov On the author’s show, Denisov TIME commented on the rumor that his channels are monopolistic:

“There are several broadcasting services on the market. If the content is fragmented, viewers must purchase additional subscriptions. When we started, we had more concentrated rights. We believed that owning this “suitcase” would bring us commercial success. The practice has shown a different story: There are anchor products that drive subscriptions. And there are products that are served as a small cookie for a cup of coffee. If you are a foodie, then you are used to eating with cookies. But initially you asked for a good espresso, and the second question is whether they gave you a cookie or not.

Today, the Football channel focuses on the Champions League and the UPL, which are not purely exclusive products. These are the Italian championship, the Dutch and so on. This is enough to develop the business and try to make it successful in the future. Today it is not so in terms of profitability.

There is Setanta on the market, which focuses on English football. There is also the MEGOGO service, which provides the right to watch La Liga, Bundesliga, etc. About UPL, a year and a half ago, a tender was held. If we were monopolists, we would somehow have to eliminate competitors. But we definitely do not close the sports editions on other channels and we do not prevent anyone from participating in the contest. When we got to the queue for the rights of the Ukrainian Premier League, it turned out that we were not only the first in this queue, but also the last.

There are many reasons. The country has a low level of anti-piracy. No foreign broadcaster will be satisfied with such a rights “joke”. It is easier to acquire a leading foreign championship. You get a satellite signal, a commentator sits in the chair, works, a beautiful image. These are all costs. In the Premier League, you buy the rights and then it turns out that you don’t get some of them, because the Premier League itself can’t agree. Also a production question: it’s 10-12 thousand dollars to broadcast a match.

It is not a problem for us that someone else broadcasts the UPL. It is important to us that these broadcasts fit into the logic of the Premier League. He insists that retransmissions must be paid for. They fully understand that the only powerful revenue for the league is television rights. The second station should be the same, then the Premier League will develop. “