Hong Kong, March 8, 2001 - Hong Kong football fans will, from this weekend onwards and for the rest of this season, be able to watch the popular English F. A. Cup matches, now at the quarter-final stage, LIVE and exclusively on CABLE TV following the conclusion of a carriage agreement between CABLE TV and STAR.

The agreement also covers important international football matches including crucial World Cup qualifying games of England, Germany, Denmark, Greece and Australia, as well as Scottish Premier League and English Nationwide League matches, CABLE TV and STAR announced jointly today.

On Saturday (March 10), CABLE TV will carry on Channel 18 the FA Cup quarter-final match between Arsenal and Blackburn (live at 11pm), followed by the other quarter-final match between Leicester City and Wycombe (delayed live immediately following the first match). On Sunday (March 11), Channel 18 will carry the other two quarter-final matches, between Liverpool and Tranmere (live at 10pm), and between West Ham and Tottenham Hotspurs (live at midnight). The station will also carry the two semi-final matches on April 8 and the Final on May 6.

The agreement also supplements the CABLE TV offering of qualifying matches to the 2002 FIFA World Cup for which it had already secured the broadcasting rights of the final round and over 200 qualifying matches. STAR , through its joint venture company, ESPN STAR Sports, holds the rights of a number of important home games involving some of the top national teams such as England and Germany. The agreement signed today enables CABLE TV to carry these matches exclusively in Hong Kong. The first match to be shown live will be the crucial World Cup qualifying match between England and Finland on March 24.

CABLE TV is operated by i-CABLE Communications Limited, a pre-eminent fully integrated communications company in Hong Kong that owns and operates the territory¡¦s second largest telecommunications network; creates its own content; and offers pay television as well as broadband Internet services at the same time. It currently provides a 31-channel pay television service to 530,000 subscribers. Its original channels produced for the Hong Kong market include two local news channels, Children, Entertainment and YMC Channels, one horse-racing and financial text channel, three basic movie channels and a seven-channel pay per view service. It also carries renowned international channels including BBC World, CNN International, CCTV, CNBC Asia, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, HBO, Cinemax, MTV, AXN, TCM &Cartoon Network as well as AXN.

STAR, a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation, is Asia's leading multi-platform content and service provider. STAR's 30 distributed services, in seven languages, reach more than 300 million viewers across 53 Asian countries. STAR channels include STAR Chinese Channel, Phoenix Chinese Channel, STAR Plus, STAR World, Channel [V], ESPN, STAR Sports, STAR Movies, STAR Gold, Phoenix Movies Channel, VIVA Cinema, STAR News, Phoenix InfoNews Channel, in addition to distributed channels Fox News, Sky News and National Geographic Channel. STAR has also invested in cable systems such as Hathway in India, and Internet portals and services companies, including netease.com, renren.com and Indya.com.