RS Acquire Spanish La Liga Rights in Thailand

July 12, 2011

RS, a new entrant in the Thai pay-television market, has purchased the rights for Spanish football’s La Liga in Thailand and plans to invest heavily to acquire further content to grow the business.

The company’s chief operations officer Pornpan Techarungchaiku said the company would be spending “hundreds of millions” on the new service, and that most of the investment would be on content licence fees. She said that the company may bid for English Premier League rights when they next come on the market, for the 2013-14 season onwards. It is understood to have acquired the Liga rights for two seasons, 2012-13 and 2013-14.

Techarungchaiku said the company would be investing more in the pay-television service than the US$11.5m per year it currently invests in its free-to-air satellite channels.

RS plans to launch its satellite and cable pay-television service in June or July 2012.

Techarungchaiku said: “Under a commitment with the Spanish football league to increase the number of its fans in the kingdom, the company has high hopes to achieve an ambitious target of 150,000 to 160,000 subscribers in the first year. We expect to see 10-per-cent growth a year.”