TV broadcast rights holders of the Ghana Premier League, StarTimes say the company has suffered huge losses since they started to invest in local football and have described attacks on their brand as “primitive and regressive”.
The company has been caught in the line of bad press over the last weeks following the Ghana Football Association’s decision to stop Asante Kotoko from recording their game against Techiman Eleven Wonders with a video camera from one of their sponsors VEO.
Kotoko fans, in protest of the GFA’s decision, started a social media campaign to uninstall StarTimes, suggesting the company is exploiting the GPL clubs, consequently punishing the broadcasters for the GFA’s impasse with Kotoko.
In a strongly worded statement signed by Head of Marketing for StarTimes, Akorfa Banson, the Chinese pay TV outfit said “the perception being created that StarTimes is exploiting the GPL clubs is untrue, devious, unfair and must be disregarded and condemned.”
Read the full statement below:
StarTimes’ attention has been drawn to a social media post by “THE ULTRAS” making the rounds on social media which seeks to cast aspersions on the StarTimes brand. The mathematical fallacy concept used by the originator of the post produced a howler which looked mathematically correct, nonetheless the results were derived by incorrect lines of reasoning which we wish to address as follows:
● StarTimes is paying an amount of USD$1,000,000 to the GFA as Rights and sponsorship fees for the GPL, FA CUP AND WOMENS LEAGUE for the 2020/2021 season. StarTimes is producing live games at the cost of
USD$1,000,000. An additional USD$500,000 is being expended on promotion of the GPL.● The StarTimes ON APP has a specific bouquet for GPL which gives access to all GPL live games and highlights for the 2020/2021 season at a minimal cost of GHC99 for the whole season at GHC0.70 pesewas per day
● The StarTimes ON APP has two other bouquets MAX VIP and SPORT VIP which gives you access to GPL, EUROPA, LALIGA, NBA and other sports and sports content at a daily rate of GHC7 and GHC8 respectively.
Subscriptions on the APP can be made daily, weekly, monthly or even annually. Daily rates are reduced to as low as GHC0.96 per day depending on the duration of subscription. The higher your duration of subscription, the lesser the daily rate.
● StarTimes decoder users currently have exclusive rights to link one decoder to three mobile devices for free. What this means is that if there are 50,000 viewers watching a particular channel on the StarTimes ON APP, that could be 12,500 decoder users who have linked their decoders to 3 mobile devices and are therefore using the APP for free.
The perception therefore that StarTimes is exploiting the GPL clubs is fallacious and must be disregarded. On assumption of our role as Broadcast rights holders in 2016, The Broadcast rights fees were singlehandedly paid by StarTimes as should, but broadcast of games produced for television was not limited to StarTimes, matches were made available for live broadcast to more than 10 free-to-air partner stations in Ghana simultaneously for at no cost to these FTA stations.
Over 100 radio stations were also given the rights to run commentary for free. This was an innovative strategy introduced by StarTimes to give a wider reach and also increase the commercial clout of the GPL.
Despite all our investments as a company, our goals and targets have not been met to ensure a smooth running of our business. We have suffered huge losses as expected revenue from subscribers/advertisers could not be realized and the investments made wasted due to the pressure of the drawn-out processes of abrupt league cancelations due to the Anas Aremeyaw Anas expose and truncations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At this point, no anomalous calculations were made about how much StarTimes was investing into Ghana football and how much was lost. StarTimes has also suffered a lot of bad press. The brand has been vilified, called out and attacked and caught up in unpleasant impasses just by our association with Ghana football. No Pay TV service provider or broadcaster has ever invested in the local game as much as StarTimes has done.
We believe this thuggery against brands who support local football is primitive, regressive and discourage corporate bodies from supporting Ghana football. The perception being created that StarTimes is exploiting the GPL clubs is untrue, devious, unfair and must be disregarded and condemned.
StarTimes remains committed to the growth of Ghana football. StarTimes is the leading digital TV operator in Africa, serving 13 million DVB subscribers and 20 million OTT users in 30+ countries. StarTimes owns a 600+ channels’ content platform combining African local channels (75%) and international channels.
The company’s vision is “To ensure that every African family can access, afford, watch and share the beauty of digital TV”.