Watching EPL

Football is huge out here and big business. If you like to go out, football from all over the world is shown live every weekend in bars all across Thailand. No need to list them here, if they’re a a bar and have a TV, odds are, they have football.

Watching it in your home?

Well. Truevisions, holders of the EPL rights for years lost the rights for the next three seasons.

And the winner was..

CTH.

CTH, who are they?

Exactly.

Small company Cable Thai Holdings won the race. To be frank, this changeover has not been too successful. Aiming for 3 million set top box customers for the start of the season and reports suggested the number for closer to 60,000. You have two options for watching CTH, cable or satellite.

I won’t get into specifics with various problems, but obtaining CTH is not the easiest thing in the world.

Living in a condo?

Check with the condo management whether cable TV is installed in your condo. Some condos, mine included, already have cable from a company called Charoen (although there are various others). That means all you need is a set top box to get going.

If the condo doesn’t have cable, check if they are CTH ready via satellite dish. Some condos, not many at the moment, have a large CTH ready satellite dish set up meaning you only need a box.

Next option, get a dish on your balcony. Can be ugly, impossible if you rent or just not worth it. Again, speak with the management of the condo/apartment building.

Living in a house?

This is more straight forward. Get a dish and a box and watch. Easy, yes?

Maybe not.

Contacting CTH

CTH has a website (all in Thai). Here. It has a a contact number here and a list of other places you can obtain CTH here. Click กรุงเทพฯและปริมณฑล for Bangkok.

Having heard stories, and dealt with CTH first hand, we recommend the following:

Call CTH, give your details, insist on booking an appointment. If they insist on calling you to let you know when, make sure they do. If they don’t, call and call again.

Don’t stop there.

Call more of the other places. Make a few appointments. When you get lucky and finally get it, you can then cancel the others. Don’t wait on one promise. I myself had an appointment arranged. Nobody turned up so I called CTH. “We have no record of your booking”. Great.

One story suggests that when two engineers finally turned up at one bemused customer's house, in a taxi, they had no ladder and had to go straight home.

Cost.

The full package is 899 baht, considerably cheaper than True Visions. This can also be made cheaper by signing up for longer contracts. The one off set up fee varies depending on what company installs it for you.

The full package gets you 6 HD football channels showing every single premier league game. You also get a lot of other channels such as Sky News HD, Fox News HD and various other entertainment and movie channels.