For the sec­ond straight year, a po­ten­tial Eng­lish Pre­mier League (EPL) ti­tle de­cid­ing match be­tween Man­ches­ter City and Ar­se­nal could not be viewed in T&T via the le­gal rights hold­er for the com­pe­ti­tion in re­gion.

Sun­day’s match at the Eti­had end­ed in a stale­mate, but many lo­cal fans have found them­selves at a loss as for two months they have had to turn to il­le­gal stream­ing sites to watch match­es from the most viewed foot­ball league in the world.

As a re­sult there may be ma­jor loss­es ac­crued by var­i­ous en­ti­ties that pre­vi­ous­ly ben­e­fit­ted from the league’s view­ers.

Ver­ti­cast Me­dia Group soared in­to the spot­light in 2022, when it an­nounced it would be the ex­clu­sive hold­er of EPL broad­cast rights for the Caribbean. Ver­ti­cast pres­i­dent and CEO Oliv­er McIn­tosh vowed to rev­o­lu­tionise the con­sump­tion of live sports in the re­gion by com­bin­ing tra­di­tion­al me­dia with on-the-go stream­ing via the CSport web­site and app. His promise was that all 380 match­es would be avail­able live to cus­tomers on those medi­ums.

When the Man­ches­ter City/Ar­se­nal match was not shown live last year, McIn­tosh said it was as a re­sult of a crit­i­cal fail­ure, but he stressed the com­pa­ny had been large­ly suc­cess­ful as it had suc­cess­ful­ly shown 377 out of 380 EPL match­es live via its plat­form.

He stat­ed con­tent­ment with com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance in his first year, stat­ing that it was ap­proach­ing 60,000 sub­scribers in Trinidad and To­ba­go alone while al­so boost­ing the num­ber of sub­scribers to Am­plia, the on­ly lo­cal ca­ble provider who of­fered CSport chan­nels.

How­ev­er the sopho­more year has been trou­bling.

The last time Ver­ti­cast, the cur­rent hold­er of the rights, showed an EPL live on its Csport chan­nel was on Feb­ru­ary 1, when Wolver­hamp­ton Wan­der­ers host­ed Man­ches­ter Unit­ed. It is al­so the last match that can be prop­er­ly viewed on the Csport web­site, al­though it lists the Feb­ru­ary 3 en­counter be­tween Ever­ton and Tot­ten­ham Hot­spurs as avail­able. Click­ing on that link would on­ly bring up what dis­ap­point­ed sub­scribers would have seen on the Csport chan­nels at that time, re­plays of old­er match­es and EPL-re­lat­ed con­tent be­ing broad­cast in place of what should have been the ad­ver­tised match.

The CSport chan­nels con­tin­ued to broad­cast old EPL match­es on both Am­plia and the Csport.tv web­site un­til mid-March. Since then, the chan­nels now dis­play “a no sig­nal to set top box” alert on Am­plia’s IPTV ca­ble ser­vice, while the pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able op­tion to watch live chan­nels on the web­site has gone miss­ing.

CSport’s so­cial me­dia pages have al­so gone silent. The last post on X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) was on Feb­ru­ary 3, when the com­pa­ny an­nounced it would be un­able to broad­cast match­es that week­end.

That no­tice stat­ed, “We re­gret to in­form you that the Pre­mier League games sched­uled for Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 3, are un­avail­able.

“We apol­o­gise for the in­con­ve­nience and ap­pre­ci­ate your pa­tience as we work to re­solve the is­sue.”

That post had been rou­tine­ly vis­it­ed by up­set fans since, many of whom have ex­pressed anger that the match­es have been un­avail­able since then with sev­er­al an­nounc­ing they would be un­sub­scrib­ing from the ser­vice.

The next post­ing on any of the CSport so­cial me­dia pages came two weeks lat­er on Feb­ru­ary 17 via an In­sta­gram sto­ry which read, “We apol­o­gise for the on­go­ing Pre­mier League broad­cast dis­rup­tions lead­ing in­to this week­end.

“We deeply re­gret this in­con­ve­nience and great­ly ap­pre­ci­ate your pa­tience. Our team is con­fi­dent that we are very close to a res­o­lu­tion.

“We un­der­stand your frus­tra­tion but rest as­sured, af­fect­ed cus­tomers will be com­pen­sat­ed. De­tails will fol­low soon.

“Thank you for your un­der­stand­ing.”

De­spite that claim, de­tails to cus­tomers have been scarce.

One month af­ter that post, the Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Ver­ti­cast pres­i­dent and CEO Oliv­er McIn­tosh to get an up­date on Ver­ti­cast’s cov­er­age of the EPL.

McIn­tosh has yet to re­spond to ques­tions sent to him.

The im­pact of the com­pa­ny’s ac­qui­si­tion of the rights in 2022 has cre­at­ed sev­er­al is­sues for ma­jor telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion play­ers in the re­gion.

Con­cerns were raised in T&T and the Caribbean af­ter it be­came known that Flow and Dig­i­cel had not come to an agree­ment with Ver­ti­cast to car­ry their chan­nels in their ca­ble pack­ages. This meant that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s, and in­deed sev­er­al of the Caribbean’s, two largest ca­ble tele­vi­sion providers were un­able to broad­cast the pop­u­lar league in their pack­ages.

Flow and Dig­i­cel had ac­tu­al­ly part­nered to se­cure the rights from 2019 to 2022, as they not­ed the ris­ing cost of se­cur­ing the lu­cra­tive cov­er­age.

In a time where ca­ble sub­scrip­tions were dip­ping amid the in­creas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of stream­ing ser­vices, live sport has been one of the main rea­sons many across the world re­tain ca­ble tele­vi­sion sub­scrip­tions.

How­ev­er, EPL rights are not cheap, as for the 2022-2025 pe­ri­od, the com­bined sum of in­ter­na­tion­al rights (out­side of the UK) for the league was worth $5.4 bil­lion. In De­cem­ber, Sky Sports, TNT Sports and the BBC split the live and high­lights rights in the UK for a com­bined UK£6.7 bil­lion (US$8.44 bil­lion) over four years be­tween 2025 and 2029.

When Ver­ti­cast se­cured the rights, Flow con­firmed the in­creased cost was a cen­tral con­cern in its de­ci­sion not to sign a deal to car­ry the C Sport chan­nels stat­ing then, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we were un­able to reach an agree­ment that pre­vents us from charg­ing our cus­tomers more for what they’ve come to ex­pect from us over the years.”

The cost of EPL rights al­so be­came a talk­ing point in Guardian Me­dia’s re­cent an­nu­al fi­nan­cial re­port, as chair­man Pe­ter Clarke not­ed that the com­pa­ny’s deal with Ver­ti­cast to show match­es did not bring the ex­pect­ed re­turns.

Clarke said GML’s mul­ti-me­dia rev­enues and prof­itabil­i­ty were neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the low­er-than-ex­pect­ed com­mer­cial in­ter­est in the Eng­lish Pre­mier League (EPL) cam­paign and the as­so­ci­at­ed costs of those rights.

But CSport’s re­cent trou­bles have now cre­at­ed prob­lem for TSTT’s af­fil­i­ate Am­plia as well, as sev­er­al cus­tomers have as­so­ci­at­ed CSport’s is­sues with the com­pa­ny.

On Feb­ru­ary 16, two weeks af­ter cov­er­age paused on CSport, Am­plia sent out an ad­vi­so­ry no­tice to cus­tomers as sev­er­al ques­tioned the sud­den ab­sence of live match­es.

The state­ment read, “Dear val­ued cus­tomers,

We wish to sin­cere­ly apol­o­gise for the re­cent in­ter­rup­tion of the C Sport Chan­nels air­ing the Pre­mier League games. At this time, we are still dili­gent­ly work­ing with CSport, the ex­clu­sive broad­cast rights hold­er in the Caribbean, to re­solve this mat­ter as swift­ly as pos­si­ble.

Please rest as­sured that our team is ful­ly com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that you can once again en­joy live, un­in­ter­rupt­ed ac­cess to your favourite match­es

The state­ment closed, “Am­plia deeply re­grets the in­con­ve­nience caused. We thank you for your loy­al­ty and un­der­stand­ing in this mat­ter.”

Am­plia would not give a fur­ther com­ment to the Busi­ness Guardian con­cern­ing the is­sue.

In the ab­sence of live EPL match­es, the com­pa­ny has seen crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia as well, with some al­so stat­ing they would end their sub­scrip­tion to the provider. Many said they would be us­ing il­le­gal IPTV streams, which had al­ready been eat­ing in­to rev­enue of le­gal ca­ble tele­vi­sion ser­vice providers, for sev­er­al years.

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so emailed ques­tions to the Pre­mier League con­cern­ing the sta­tus of cov­er­age in the re­gion, but up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion there was no re­sponse.