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Recently, various OTT platforms have started getting exclusive rights to broadcast major sports such as the World Cup and Korean professional leagues, leading to many cases where content has shifted to paid services. The Korean professional leagues, which attract significant public attention, were originally free to watch for everyone, but after becoming available only through paid services, they have become restricted content. As sports broadcasts transformed into content only for paid subscribers of specific OTT platforms, it caused a major issue with many opinions exchanged about the value of media ‘publicness’, called the universal access right.
The Korean Broadcasting Law Article 76 (Universal Viewing Rights) stipulates that highly popular professional league games should be viewable through terrestrial broadcasts. This law is a crucial tool for ensuring equal access to information. The problem is that OTT platforms like TVING and Coupang Play sign exclusive contracts with sports leagues. This means sports can only be viewed through a paid subscription system that requires monthly payments. This paid exclusive system risks depriving citizens who can’t pay for subscriptions, especially digitally vulnerable people, such as the elderly or low- income people who are not familiar with digital devices, of their right to view.
Furthermore, the exclusive contract between KBO and TVING, which began in 2024, caused a lot of debate. This is because the subtitles that TVING produced and uploaded appeared to be made by someone lacking an understanding of baseball. There were numerous instances of errors, such as misspelling player and team names, and confusing player uniform numbers with batting order positions (for example, a player with uniform number 32 was listed as the 32nd hitter). Adding to this, TVING confused even basic baseball terms, leading to anger among baseball fans who felt the OTT platform, despite its exclusive contract, was not equipped to provide the service.
The paid exclusivity of sports broadcasts is not merely a commercial transaction but a matter directly related to the public value of cultural enjoyment. Therefore, to ensure the sustainable development of the media industry while protecting the viewing rights of all citizens, legal and institutional regulation of sports broadcasting is necessary.
By Staff Reporter Park Yulim (1-7)
