StarHub has awarded the exclusive rights to broadcast the English Premier League football matches in Singapore for the next three seasons, starting from July 2007. According to Channel News Asia, this will come as a disappointment to SingTel which was hoping to make the EPL rights a crown jewel of its own competing pay-TV service called IPTV. StarHub and SingTel - which have up till now been competing on two main platforms - mobile and broadband, are starting to face off on a new arena - payTV. And SingTel - which has started a 6-month trial for its IPTV service - made it clear that it meant serious business by entering the fray for the EPL rights. There was talk that the bidding would be aggressive but it is still not known how much StarHub is paying for the rights. When contacted by Channel NewsAsia, StarHub would only say that the information was commercially sensitive. Under the deal, StarHub will have exclusive broadcast rights to as many as 380 EPL matches on all three of its platforms - cable TV, mobile and online.