A deal that would have made live Russian football premier league matches available only to subscribers of the NTV-Plus DTH platform has effectively been rewritten. As a result, most matches will now also be screened on Sport TV, a channel operated by the public broadcaster VGTRK. Sport TV is understood to have offered the league just $600,000 (€457,593) for the rights for a season, while NTV-Plus inked a deal worth $92 million over four seasons. Russia’s deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stepped into the dispute between the parties after it was claimed that viewing figures for matches screened on NTV-Plus would only be in the region of 250,000. Separately, Moscow CableCom Corp. (MOCC) has announced that its homes passed figure in the Russian capital rose by 3.7% in February to 842,368. Terrestrial (194,932), pay-TV (78,932) and Internet (110,904) subscriber figures were meanwhile up by 6.0%, 9.8% and 7.0% respectively. MOCC offers services under the brand name Akado.(CD)
About Chris Dziadul
Chris is our Central & East Europe Editor. You can talk to Chris on Twitter @chrisdziadul or by email at cdziadul@broadbandtvnews.com