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then that’s the positioning they have chosen for themselves. Our positioning has always been to provide first-run content. Just as the consumer may choose between driving a BMW and a lesser brand, they have to make similar choices in television, between watching premium content or second-run content. What happens when those contracts are up for renewal? It’s always a competitive landscape. OSN has very strong and longstanding relationships with the studios, and as we recently announced, we have just renewed our NBCUniversal relationship for a significantly long period. We have extended our Discovery relationship and all of the premium Discovery channels are exclusively available on OSN. There will be more announcements in the coming weeks that reinforce the longterm relationships between OSN and the content owners. We have retained the relationships with those key studios and independent distributors, as is evidenced by the deals that we are announcing and have announced. But you do not have premium football rights? That’s right. We do not have premium football rights, but we do have other exclusive premium sports rights. We have access to all the cricket through our partnership with the ICC, all the golf and all WWE. What I won’t do is pay irrational sums of money for football rights, and that’s what happens in this market. The return that is being generated to obtain football rights that are being acquired by the Qatari Sovereign for broadcasters is not commercially viable. They are paying exponential
amounts of money for rights that never provide an ROI, and we are not prepared to do that. I would love to have the premium football rights on our screens. When we did the landmark deal with Abu Dhabi Media to bring their sports channels to our platform ¬– despite ADM being very competitive with us when it comes to running their sports channel – they have recognised that the consumer benefits from having all those services on one platform and the investment that OSN has made in creating what is unequivocally the most premium platform in the region. It’s the same model across the world. I don’t mind competition, but we just won’t pay silly money for rights, even if it means that the football rights are outside of our purview. Two premium pay TV operators — both have the muscle and money to go and bid for content. Will this lead to rising content costs? It’s always a delicate model, but pay TV works effectively in the way we manage the cost of content and increase the success of our business. We have very committed shareholders and now, we are in a position where we are running a profitable and successful business. In order to run a rational, economic model, we will always make certain that our costs don’t accelerate beyond our ability to grow the business. We want to carefully manage the business; we don’t want to make it so expensive that we cannot manage it. Is the market large enough to support two pay-TV operators? What we are seeing in every market and what we saw here prior to 2009 is the need for consolidation. The
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