Belgacom TV to offer ?free? football !

Belgacom TV is to offer all the 180 football matches per season in the Belgian Jupiler League as part of the basic TV subscription of its IPTV service, making it ‘free’ to all its subscribers. The operator made the move after losing the majority of the live rights to the Jupiler League competition to its cable rivals Telenet (Flander) and VOO (Walloon).

Belgacom has acquired one lot of the Belgian League consisting of 150 Saturday games (five per day) and between 29 and 31 play off games – a total of around 180 games. Belgacom said it offered €1 million for this lot.

With all other Jupiler League games now going to Telenet and VOO, Belgacom has decided not to charge for live football anymore. The Multilive mosaic channel shows all concurrent games being played on a single screen. It will start showing the games for free from the beginning of the competition this August.

All current subscribers to the football packages will be reimbursed for any subscription fee paid after July 1.

The division of the Jupiler League between two platforms, IPTV and cable, has caused some unrest amongst Belgian football fans. People who until now could watch all games by subscribing to Belgacom TV now have to buy two subscriptions, one for the IPTV service and another from the cable networks.

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