MySports and SRG battle for ice hockey supremacy

Last season, MySports primarily addressed the paying viewers of the pay TV channel MySports Pro, which costs 25 francs per month. This season, the channel is going for the masses: In the current playoff phase, the channel introduced the conference circuit and broadcasts it on MySports One - the channel that most cable network customers can receive free of charge. The conference was previously known primarily from Bundesliga broadcasts (Sky) and, since time immemorial, from radio. Here, viewers are switched back and forth from game to game, and get to hear in real time if anything worth mentioning happens in one of the games running in parallel. In Swiss ice hockey, conference broadcasting is a novelty.

This coverage strategy, which could be interpreted as a frontal attack on SRG's ice hockey supremacy, has met with criticism at Leutschenbach. "This was not the way it was envisaged in the negotiations," says SRF Sports Director Roland Mägerle in an interview with the SonntagsZeitung. "We're talking about around 1.5 million households. The idea was always: We in free TV serve the general public, and in pay TV you see everything, that's for the fan." That division has now been broken up. "I think it makes no sense for two providers to be in the same segment. That way, the ice hockey product loses value for us," says Mägerle.

However, SRF is not leaving the popular ice hockey field to the private competition without a fight. In the current quarterfinals, for example, two games are being shown simultaneously for the first time on SRF2 and SRF Info - total ice hockey. MySports head of programming Steffi Buchli told the SonntagsZeitung that she had gulped in emptiness for a moment when she found out. Because on most remote controls, the two SRF stations occupied the number two and three positions. She advised her own team to see the SRF offensive as a compliment, says Buchli, who was one of the figureheads of SRF's sports coverage before her UPC involvement.

The ice hockey association is happy about the competition between the two TV stations, which have also expanded their ice hockey coverage outside of live games. "Every minute that there is more coverage of ice hockey is in our interest," Denis Vaucher, Director National and Swiss Leage told the SonntagsZeitung.

Above all, the increased media interest is filling the association's coffers. While TV rights were worth CHF 8.5 million in 2006, today UPC and SRG together pay an average of CHF 35.4 million annually. The reason for this increase was primarily the bidding by the two pay TV stations Teleclub (Swisscom) and MySports (UPC).