Thais are crazy about English football

It’s strange sometimes we see how people in some countries get crazy with other countries sport. For instant, many tourists pay a lot of money to come to Thailand and watch Thai boxing and how much money would travel agencies in Thailand make in order for Thai people to go to England and watch football matches. For others, they install satellite TV just for watching foreign sports channels. Ever since early 90s when Thailand had “UTV” which is the first Satellite TV company and started showing Premierleague football, it has been growing. Back then, I remember when I first came to England and enjoyed my first English football when Manchester United played on TV. When I got back to Thailand, I asked my family to install our first Satellite TV and they were showing the Premierleague only twice a week. Now the market has grown and on Saturday alone, we can watch up to 5 English football matches on demand.

When I arrived in London, I was very surprised at how advanced Live football matches in Asia are because not only do you have to pay for “Sky” which is very expensive, you have to pay for matches on Saturdays as well. Also, no channels in England are allowed to broadcast 3pm kick-off matches. I think what we have in Thailand is much better than the system in England as home viewers are allowed to watch more of the football. But by encouraging English football does not do any good for Thai sports because all the people pay money to watch foreign TV instead of watching Thai Sports channel. As you can see in UBC these days, we have 6 sports channels and 4 of them are already foreign-owned channels. Here in England, they get the money from selling the live broadcasting services to foreign channels like ESPN and Star Sports.

I would not like to critisize how Thai people act to providing good sports to home viewers but I think there should be limits. Limits where Thai sports play some part in these channels than only watching what the world is doing. In Australia, American and England, they have their own sports and love to watch their people participate in it. I cannot see why over 60 million people in Thailand cannot do so too.