SBS, which has paid big bucks for the exclusive World Cup broadcasting rights, is going theextra mile to make handsome returns on its investment but at the cost of complaints from football fans.
Supporters see it as understandable for SBS to exercise its right to keep other rival TV broadcasters at bay but, when it comes to attaching price tags on just about everything related to the World Cup, their grievances have reached a boiling point.
The most seething criticism aimed at SBS finds it responsible for taking some of the life out of Korea's ubiquitous street cheering events, which have been embroidered on the country's football culture since the nation co-hosted 2002 World Cup.
Hundreds of local governments and communities were forced to scrap their plans to secure public spaces for people to watch football, with SBS vowing to exercise its public viewing rights and charge the event planners for screening the games.
This has led to a dramatic decline in outdoor viewing events, leaving only the ones arranged by large corporate sponsors in a few bustling urban areas.
For businesses like hotels, food-and-beverage outlets and movie theaters, SBS is demanding anywhere up to 100 million won for the rights to publically show the World Cup matches to their customers.
And although Seoul has its share of massive electronic billboards worthy of a 21st century metropolis, it remains to be seen just how many of them will be used to air World Cup matches in the way they did in previous mega sporting events like the Olympics or the World Baseball Classic (WBC). SBS is demanding 10 million won per game, an amount billboard operators say they can't afford to pay.
"We had requested the billboard operators show the matches to provide a better experience for the people participating in the street cheering, so the conflict is regrettable," said an official from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Granted, SBS has every right to exploit its current opportunity, having paid $65 million to acquire the exclusive World Cup broadcasting rights here, an amount rival networks KBS and MBC couldn't match.
And an SBS official said that its tight control over the public broadcasting of World Cup matches has more to do with the copyright regulations of FIFA than its own selfishness.
"It was clearly easy for local governments to arrange public cheering events in 2006, but now you have to register them beforehand and have the handlers determine whether the events are commercially-motivated or not, so it's true that some things have become more frustrating," said an SBS spokesman.
"But FIFA would deploy the same rules even if the broadcasting rights were shared by the big-three national networks."
According to industry officials, SBS is receiving billions of won from Internet protocol television (IPTV) operators KT, LG Telecom and SK Broadband for the live retransmission of the football games.
Web portals Naver (www.naver.com) and Daum (www.daum.net) each had to pay 1.5 billion won for the Web broadcasts. SBS had asked Incheon-based television station, OBS to pay 1 billion won for providing 2 minute highlight clips for the World Cup matches, which was quickly rejected by OBS.
SBS 독점중계에 눈총
월드컵 독점 중계에 큰 돈을 투자한 SBS가 본전을 찾기 위해 노력을 기울이고 있다. 이에 축구팬들의 불만이 크다.
팬들은 SBS의 중계권 권리요구에 어느 정도 수긍하는 편이나 SBS가 월드컵 관련 모든 프로그램에 권리를 행사하려 함으로써 불만이 최고조에 다다랐다.
SBS가 2002년 월드컵 이후 유행처럼 퍼진 길거리 응원에도 권리를 행사함에 경기관람의 재미를 반감시키는데 가장 많은 비난이 일고 있다.
SBS는 독점권에 따라 공공장소에서 단체 경기시청을 하지 못한다고 못박고 만일 이들 장소에서 경기가 시청될 경우 요금을 거두는 계획을 세우고 있다고 밝혔다. 이에 많은 지방 공공청사나 지역에서 계획 중이던 월드컵 응원이 취소됐다.
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