The move cements online TV's emergence as an alternative to cable TV in Asia following a bid by Singapore's SingTel broadband service to broadcast English football.

NOW Broadband, a unit of telecom operator PCCW, said it had secured the licence to screen 380 matches both on its service to TV sets and on its mobile phone video service.

It outbid i-Cable Communications with a 1.56 billion Hong Kong (200 million US) dollar offer for the licence to show all top-flight English games between next year and 2010, The Standard newspaper reported, citing market sources.

The report said the bid was so high that i-Cable wasn't able to come in with a counterbid.

"The first bids made by the two operators were so significantly apart that the English Premier League decided against holding a second round of bidding," a source was quoted as telling the paper.

The report said analysts expected NOW -- which has 654,000 subscribers -- to have to pay a further 400 million dollars in operating costs to show the games.