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The last bastions have surrendered. MSOs Hathway and InCable, who have been holding out against carrying the signals of exclusive Fifa rights holder Ten Sports for a week now, agreed to relay the service a few minutes ago, to the relief of hundreds of thousands of football fans in the city.
The agreement makes the channel available to over two million more homes in the city. Sports buffs can now view World Cup soccer, with the MSOs reaching an agreement with the broadcaster on Friday evening. The channel has already started beaming into Mumbai homes. It is still not clear whether both MSOs, who control nearly 75 per cent of C&S households in the city have agreed to the demand for a declared subscriber connectivity base of 2,00,000 by the channel‘s distributor Modi Entertainment Network.
Whether the channel will be on the prime band, and whether any new advertisers have now come on board, is still unclear. Ten Sports had last weekend clamped down on cable ops in Mumbai city who were illegally transmitting the channel. Crack teams had been deployed to stop unauthorised transmission, since only a few MSOs like Seven Star and Rajesh Cable had signed on Ten Sports till then.
