KUALA LUMPUR: Hardly a day after his announcement of a RM2.3 billion buyout of his flagship pay-TV operator in Malaysia, tycoon T Ananda Krishnan is now rumoured to be the mystery bidder vying against media mogul Rupert Murdoch for the Australian Football League (AFL) broadcast rights.

People at Ananda’s Fetch IPTV, a pay-TV provider in Australia that is slated to launch its service this year, are reportedly also talking to free-to-air TV networks about collaborating in a joint bid for the rights to shut out the Murdoch-backed pay-TV Foxtel, Australia’s The Age newspaper reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources.

Foxtel is 50%-owned by leading telecommunications provider Telstra Corp Ltd, of which the Australian government is a part-owner via a fund, among other institutional investors.

Murdoch’s News Corp controls 25% of Foxtel, which according to its website is connected to almost 1.6 million homes via cable and satellite. The remaining 25% is held by Consolidated Media Holdings Ltd.

Incidentally, news of Ananda buying Fetch TV too had emerged within days of the reflotation of Maxis’ Malaysian operations on Nov 19 last year.

It was then reported that Ananda was seizing the opportunity pursuant to the Australian government’s proposed national broadband network that paved the way for new players to compete against traditional media for the country’s television viewership.

Fetch TV is held under Ananda’s Astro All Asia Networks plc, Malaysia’s dominant pay-TV provider that is being taken private, a source close to the company recently told The Edge Financial Daily. “(Fetch TV) is under Astro… it was a small deal (in value terms), so there wasn’t a big announcement,” the source said.

According to The Age, the AFL is expected to ask A$1 billion (RM3.04 billion) for the broadcast rights for the next five years through 2016. Fetch, which will deliver pay-TV using broadband lines instead of a satellite connection, declined comment.

Fetch, which reportedly plans to give away free set-up boxes, is said to be “the under bidder” to Fox Sports in last November’s negotiations for the Australian broadcast rights to the English Premier League (EPL).

In October last year, Astro, in a joint bid with ESPN Star Sports, was said to have paid over US$250 million (RM855 million) to keep its exclusive rights to broadcast the 2010/2013 EPL in Malaysia.

SingTel was believed to have paid S$400 million (US$283 million or RM976 million) to clinch the 2010/2013 EPL rights for Singapore, according to unconfirmed news reports, almost double the US$150 million StarHub was said to have paid in 2006.

According to The Age report yesterday, Network Ten, which shares the AFL broadcast rights with Seven, is the most likely frontrunner to partner Fetch in sharing the costs of buying the rights and broadcasting the nine weekly games the AFL will run from the 2012 season.

Fetch will reportedly provide pay-TV to Internet service providers, such as iiNet, Internode and TPG, and can offer a bundled deal of unmetered pay-TV, fixed-line telephone and broadband Internet for a monthly fee, allowing it to compete more effectively against Telstra, the current holder of the AFL online rights.

The emergence of Fetch as a competitor for the broadcast rights is seen as the early benefits of convergence where consumers are given more choices of pay-TV providers.

However, like the case in Singapore, it remains to be seen if these new convergent players are able to win enough subscribers, having out-bid the market incumbent. Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (SingTel), which outbid incumbent pay-TV operator StarHub Ltd, to clinch the 2010/2013 season’s exclusive EPL broadcast rights, for instance, is reportedly faced with a confidence crisis with consumers up in arms after its IPTV service “mioTV” broke down for days due to a bug.

Singapore football fans were said to be already in a furore due to the possibility of no real-time broadcast of the 2010 World Cup in the island-state due to the stalemate in discussions for the rights.

That is said to have led to the Media Development Authority of Singapore’s recent decision, requiring pay-TV operators to cross-carry (by Sept 1 this year) each other’s content that’s acquired or renewed on an exclusive basis after March 12, 2010.

The decision is to “address potential anti-competitive behaviour arising from convergence and provide more opportunities for players to enter the market”, the authority said in its statement.

This article appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, March 19, 2010.