This is how much SingTel, StarHub will battle for Barclays Premier League rights

Cost of broadcast rights in the UK already surged 70%.

According to CIMB, the auction for exclusive broadcast rights to the 2013-15 seasons of the BPL, dubbed "The Greatest Show on Earth", is widely expected to take place in 4Q12.

Here's more from CIMB:

The cost of BPL (Barclays Premier League) rights will remain high. According to Manchester United, the Premier League (PL), the organising body for the BPL, is looking to raise revenue from overseas broadcast rights for the 2013-15 seasons by about 50% vs. the previous three seasons.

This target is, in our opinion, conservative given that the cost of the rights in the UK surged 70% for the 2013-15 seasons vs. the 2010-12 seasons despite a faltering domestic economy. That said, we believe there was some element of competition for the rights among British broadcasters.

Cross-carriage ruling will not change prices in Singapore. The situation in Singapore is unique because of the cross-carriage ruling, which requires exclusive content holders to offer the content to other subscribers. But we believe PL will not price exclusive and non-exclusive rights very differently.

This is because granting non-exclusive rights to one pay TV operator at a lower price does not mean that other operators will acquire the rights, in our view. And if other operators fail to bite, PL, which aims to maximise its returns, will have lost potential revenue. Hence, we believe PL will demand similar prices for both exclusive and non-exclusive rights.

Armed with deep pockets, we think SingTel is aiming to bag the BPL broadcast rights but on non-exclusive terms. SingTel needs iconic content such as the BPL to grow its subscriber base and to complete its football line-up that it has been aggressively building up.

Non-exclusivity will not trigger the cross-carriage ruling and will force non-SingTel viewers to sign up with SingTel if they want to view the matches. We think that SingTel is not interested in securing rights exclusively because a non-SingTel subscriber can request for access for a small fee and this does not help SingTel build up a subscriber base to sell its other programming to. i.e. SingTel does not "own" that subscriber.

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