Football fans livid after PBS decides not to broadcast Germany vs England on TVM

As a result of the fact that Italian state broadcaster RAI had decided not to broadcast the match, then English football supporters, which are the most numerous in Malta, will have to resort to Melita Digital to watch the much-awaited game.

Football fans have accused PBS of reneging on a promise made already made to viewers that the company would be broadcasting 46 games from the South Africa World Cup, as revealed by sister paper Illum.

PBS had originally acquired the free-to-air and pay-tv rights for all the 64 games of the 2010 World Cup, but had then sub-let the pay-tv rights to Melita.

MaltaToday has learnt that the decision not to broadcast the game was taken during the last few hours of yesterday and was communicated to interested parties yesterday afternoon.

The match had already been included in the TVM schedule for the World Cup, a copy of which was sent to MaltaToday by PBS itself three weeks ago.

PBS had also advertised the game in the newspapers tv pages.

On his part, acting PBS CEO Natalino Fenech told It-Torca that the decision not to broadcast the game was “part of a contract that was made prior to the World Cup”.

“We had to broadcast 46 games and  had to sell 16 games. The decision was taking according to the EBU directives. There is a procedure how certain games are sold” he was quoted as saying.

“There are certain cases where we could choose and other cases where Melita had to choose,” Fenech told It-Torca.