Chinese pay TV group StarTimes wows audiences with World Cup
The 2018 Russia World Cup, which ran from June 14 to July 15, saw jubilant fans go wild around the world, including Africa — and amid the festivities, a Chinese company was active in the sidelines helping fans join the party in Nigeria.
In that country, millions of households paid only 1,300 naira ($3.60) to watch all 64 matches of the World Cup live through the StarTimes pay television channel, while the price of two other local digital TV operators was several times higher.
Little known is that StarTimes is a Chinese-funded private company and after entering the African market, the company really broke the mold for the pay TV market there.
Before StarTimes entered the continent’s digital television sector, digital TV networks charged more than $12 per month. That was a luxury for most African families, and Nigeria was no exception. But Williams Tobon, who lives in Kano, in northern Nigeria’s commercial hub, bought a StarTimes decoder several years ago, and the minimum monthly subscription fee of less than $3 has made him a loyal customer of StarTimes ever since.
This year, with the Super Eagles of Nigeria playing in the World Cup, Tobon topped up with the $3.60 bouquet, so as not to miss a live broadcast.
On July 19, he recharged his StarTimes decoder yet again, for a onemonth subscription.
“I’m a fan of Chelsea,” he explained. “Recently, the International Champions Cup matches have been showing live on StarTimes platform and I didn’t want to miss Chelsea’s three games,” The ICC is an international football event for which StarTimes has the exclusive broadcast rights in Nigeria and Nigerians can only watch live broadcasts of the matches on its platform.
StarTimes, after entering Africa, reportedly also bought the rights to broadcast top-level events such as the America’s Cup, Bundesliga, Serie A and the World Cup. Indian Bollywood film and television dramas and the local Nollywood movies and TV series broadcast by StarTimes are popular among Nigerian people, and StarTimes has become a high-quality content platform that is affordable to many people in the country.
In addition, StarTimes has actively promoted the broadcast of Chinese film and television dramas in Africa.
The series Doudou and Her Mothers-in-law, A Story of Lala’s Promotion and The Young Doctor were translated into English, French, Portuguese, and a total of eight African mainstream languages including Swahili and Hausa.
Critics said these leading Chinese modern film and television dramas faithfully reflected the emotions, lives, careers, and families of ordinary Chinese people, arousing strong resonance among African people and opening a window for African people into China’s culture. In 2016, StarTimes bought the all-media rights for the Chinese Super League in subSaharan Africa, enabling it to be seen in Africa for the first time and continuing the momentum of Chinese culture to “go global” through sports, films and television dramas.
Zhang Jin, CEO of the Nigerian subsidiary of the StarTimes, said that his company has invested a total of $220 million in Nigeria and developed a network of nearly 3,000 dealers in the country, as well as getting involved with locally produced television channels.
The company said it is actively involved in corporate social responsibility and has paid a total of $25 million in tax to the Nigerian government. It has also recruited more than 1,300 employees, 95 percent of whom are locals.
In addition, StarTimes has trained a large number of professionals in Nigeria, directly employing a total of 2,000 people, and indirectly employing tens of thousands of people in various fields such as marketing, technology and customer services.
The Digital Village Project is one of the cooperation initiatives for China and Africa that was proposed at the Johannesburg Summit of the ChinaAfrica Cooperation Forum in 2015.
It proposes offering 10,000 villages in Africa access to satellite TV, to promote cultural exchanges and the relationship between China and the African people.
StarTimes is the implementer of the Digital Village Project, and this project in Nigeria is about to begin.
Zhang said that StarTimes will connect digital TV signals to 1,000 villages in Nigeria by the end of 2018, donating 20,000 decoders, 3,000 sets of solar energy products, 2,000 projector TVs, and 1,000 regular TVs.
“Our goal is to popularize digital TV and enable African people to enjoy the digital life,” he said.