I can afford to, but I won’t. I’ll be missing the world’s premier football event, but I have to take a stand. In order to make my voice heard, I have to him them in a language they understand.
I have always maintained my belief that the most evil companies are telcos. Exorbitant rates for roaming, data and especially SMS have fueled this belief. Oh, don’t get me started on data roaming. You wanna throw away money fast? You don’t gamble, you go to a foreign land and start using 3G data roaming. Your rate of expenditure will be faster that way.
Getting the television rights to the World Cup 2010 for Singapore was a huge drama itself, with the media outlets speculating that Singaporeans might miss out on football’s greatest tournament. It is only on 29th April 2010, about a month and a half before the massive event starts, that channelnewsasia reported on its online portal that the rights have been secured.
Of course, the details of the deal will never be published. In propaganda-crazy Singapore, it usually means bad news.
Like any “good” journalist, a few figures were magically plucked out of the air and thrown into the article. It’s hard to believe when words like “according to sources” and “it is believed” are used. According to sources, it is believed that such words are only reserved for highly opinionated, misinformed and biased blogs.
But hey! Look at the bright side, we get to watch the World Cup! All of the matches! For only S$70.62 if you sign up before May 31st, and S$94.16 thereafter. If you have an existing StarHub Cable TV subscription. More if you dont’t.
Wait, what? A bit of googling around (because of my poor memory), StarHub only charged us $10 (for early birds) back in 2006.
I’m sure for most Singaporeans, $70 is pocket change. It’s probably the cost of one weekend, maybe lesser. Surely we can sacrifice ONE weekend of shopping to get all 64 matches. But what message will that tell StarHub? That they can happily charge exorbitant rates? That they can dilly-dally with securing the rights to a very popular event? That they can pass down their mistakes to consumers?
I’m a sucker. A huge one. But even suckers have their limits. As much as I would like to, I can’t justify the cost. Call me a non-hardcore football fan if you want.
At least the semi’s and final will be shown live over-the-air! For the rest, there’s always kopitiams, McDonald’s and the internet.
