hankyoreh

South Korean broadcaster SBS has breached an agreement with the nation’s two other major television broadcasters and signed an exclusive contract to broadcast the Olympics and World Cup games. The other two companies, KBS and MBC, said that the written agreement not to pursue a monopoly on the broadcasts was reached only two months ago, and said they would consider legal action.

"SBS-affiliated SBS International won an exclusive broadcast license for the 2010 and 2014 World Cup games," said SBS yesterday. The Los Angeles-based SBS International is entirely financed by SBS in Korea, and is primarily concerned with purchasing content for broadcasting. SBS International signed a contract with Dentsu Inc., which had obtained permission to resell Asian broadcasting rights for the 2010 and 2014 World Cup from the international soccer federation FIFA. The amount paid by SBS for the rights was about 130 milllion USD, more than twice the amount paid to broadcast both the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup (about 35 million USD) and the 2006 German World Cup games (about 25 million USD) combined. Earlier than this, SBS bought rights to relay four Olympics games - from the 2010 winter Olympics to the 2016 summer Olympics - from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at a cost of 72.5 million USD.

According to KBS and MBC, SBS president An Guk-jeong and his KBS and MBC counterparts Jung Yun-joo and Choi Moon-soon had signed an agreement to simplify the negotiations over the rights to relay the international sports events, and not to have any individual contact with the official international broadcasting rights holders, but SBS unilaterally breached the agreement, they said.

Defending itself, SBS said, "Even though we have signed an exclusive contract, we will enable South Koreans to view the Olympic and World Cup games through the other two companies by selling broadcast rights to KBS and MBC."

Media organizations expressed concerns over the broadcasting companies’ cutthroat competition and waste of foreign currency as a result. The Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic Media (CCDM) criticized SBS, saying that "the broadcast licensing fee will ultimately be paid by the local viewers, and it is therefore national property. But this national property has been wasted by a commercial broadcaster that breached a joint agreement."