Singapore – The Media Development Authority (MDA) is still studying how best to regulate the pay-TV market. For now, it will not intervene in the exclusive sale of football broadcasting rights. The issue was raised in Parliament last week, with MPs concerned that competition between StarHub and SingTel would lead to consumers losing out. Free market competition in the pay-TV market has so far led to a wider choice of programmes for consumers. But the sale of exclusive English Premier League broadcasting rights to SingTel has prompted MPs to ask whether the government should step in. Lui Tuck Yew, Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts said, “Hypothetically, we can tell whoever it is – service providers – that you can only charge subscribers a certain amount. And so they would bid accordingly. But bear in mind, that the content owner is not obligated to sell us this. And so the content owner may very well say that, ‘I will not sell to Singapore’ – and we will be at the greater loss, particularly for the consumers who say they are prepared to pay the price for the package.” Lui added that it is too early to tell if the pay-TV market is too small to sustain competition and he said the situation is different from the free-to-air market which tried to introduce competition a few years back. In the past when StarHub Cable Vision was the only provider, there were only about 64 channels locked into exclusive contract arrangements; that number has now more than doubled, to 131 channels.