Just hours before a Dutch judge will rule on the KPN case against Fox Sports, the broadcaster rebuffs the operator, who claims that it was forced to put the main Dutch football channel in its basic tier.
“KPN approached us in January 2016 with a proposal based on putting Fox Sports 1 in basic ,” Frank Rutten, EVP Sports Europe & Africa at Fox Networks Group, told Broadband TV News , “There were looking for programming to counter act the launch of Ziggo Sport [which is exclusively available in basic to all Ziggo subscribers]”
At the moment, KPN is offering premium services such as Spotify Premium to its KPN Compleet customers and HBO as part of the basic offer of the operator’s OTT service Play by KPN. Likewise, KPN was looking to offer premium football customers to its TV customers.
In response, before and after Fox offered a number of possibilities; for KPN to choose from. This included both the possibility to put Fox Sports 1 in basic as well as keeping all Fox Sports channels as premium channels. The latter option also includes a minimum guarantee, “Which is usual for premium channels.”
Rutten also dismissed any claims that Fox would dictate the end price for the consumer, “that would be against Dutch law.”
