English Premier League followers are fuming as more often than not teams playing in the traditional Saturday 4pm bracket will not be screened live on GO’s premium sports channel, which holds the exclusive rights for Malta.
Last weekend, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur fans had to wait till 6.15pm to see their team in action. Next week it will be the turn of Chelsea’s supporters as for the second time in a fortnight none of the Saturday afternoon games will be screened live.
UK football followers were quick to vent their frustration on social media, complaining that in spite of paying the same price as last year, they were missing half the action.
“Not served at all with just one live afternoon match,” was a common complaint on Facebook.
Last summer GO announced that it had retained exclusive rights to broadcast all of the 380 Premier League matches for the next three seasons. However, many subscribers were seemingly unaware that only 200 of the matches would be transmitted live. Facing a barrage of complaints, the consumer watchdog launched an investigation, just weeks into the start of the season which kicked off last month.
The controversy was reignited when two Saturdays ago, on September 17, none of the 4pm matches were screened live – including games featuring Arsenal and Manchester City.
The latter’s fans missed out once again last Saturday when just one out of the five games was transmitted live.
A quick look at the fixture list reveals that the next 4pm games to be screened live will be on Saturday October 22, when Arsenal host Middlesbrough. Consequently, a number of games involving Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester City will be transmitted with a two-hour delay.
Contacted by this newspaper, a GO spokeswoman confirmed that the 168 core matches to be broadcast live exclude Saturday 4pm kick offs.
However, GO was given the discretion to select an additional 32 live matches with Maltese commentary, which could include Saturday 4pm games, an additional Sunday match or a mid-week fixture, she added.
In view of the fact that these 32 matches have to be selected from 37 weeks of fixtures, there will inevitably be instances when no live games are broadcast on Saturday at 4pm, GO said.
The spokeswoman told this newspaper that decisions on how to use up this allocation of 32 games would be reviewed on an ongoing basis in an effort to preserve an allocation of matches for later in the season, and especially for those weeks when high profile matches were scheduled outside the 168 core games.
Asked if these new arrangements had been communicated to its subscribers, GO insisted that it had done so through the press and its own online and customer service channels.
Meanwhile questions to the consumer watchdog on the outcome of the pending investigation and the aforementioned fresh complaints were not answered by the time of going to print.