Canal+ Sport, which offers viewers in the Czech Republic coverage of the Premier League, will not beavailable to O2 TV subscribers.
It can only be viewed on Skylink, freeSAT and T-Mobile and costs CZK189 (€7.67) a month as a standalone service. In the case of Skylink, it can be received as part of the Kombi+ package, costing from CZK349 a month.
Commenting on the development, Ladislav Rehacek, VP of Canal+ Luxembourg for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, said: “In order to ensure a sufficient number of viewers for our new sports channel, we already approached all major operators with an offer to share it in the first half of the year. We are glad that we even before the launch, we managed to reach an agreement with the Deutsche Telekom group, and Canal+ Sport is thus available not only on our Skylink and freeSAT platforms, but also on the offer of T-Mobile, Slovak Telekom and Digi Slovakia. This combined represents almost half of Czech and Slovak households and any other it gives interested parties the opportunity to choose from all the usual technologies. The channel is very well received by viewers, and the number of new customers we have acquired thanks to it is several times higher than we planned. We are thus in a situation where we are not dependent on other partnerships. Dealing with O2 hasn’t moved anywhere in over a month so we’ve decided to shut them down”.
Rehacek concluded by saying he did not expect to see an agreement with O2 for the current Premier League season.
