Less than 27 days before the UEFA European Championship finals kick off in Austria and Switzerland, football fans in Malta are still on tenterhooks as there have been no announcements by any of the network operators or broadcasters about the award of the television rights for this event.
Wolfgang Resch, spokesperson for Euro 2008 SA, the organisers of the UEFA European Championship, told MaltaToday that the match was still on extra time: “The situation hasn’t changed, the media rights for Malta are still not assigned.”
On Wednesday, sister paper BusinessToday revealed that the media rights in Malta for the UEFA 2008 Championship, which kicks off on 7 June with the inaugural game in Basel, had not been adjudicated yet.
A spokesperson for UEFA had told the business paper: “The media rights for Malta have not been assigned yet. Please respect that we are not commenting on ongoing negotiations.”
According to the UEFA website, the negotiation process for the broadcasting rights for Malta opened on 18 February. Industry sources told MaltaToday that the delay in the adjudication for the broadcasting rights of the UEFA 2008 finals is an indication that there is a strong bidding war between a number of operators for the coveted rights. As yet it is uncertain whether the successful bidder would bear the rights to broadcast all 31 games, or only a few.
For the first time in the history of UEFA, the television rights for the European Football Championship final round are being negotiated on a market-by-market basis.
Previously, UEFA would assign the rights to a regional broadcasting organisation such as the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), a consortium of public broadcasters in Europe, which in turn would negotiate the rights for each country.
The sales are being conducted on UEFA’s behalf by the Sportfive agency, UEFA’s sales agent for the marketing of broadcast rights relating to the UEFA Euro 2008.
In 2006, the award of television rights the 2006 FIFA World Cup finals to Melita Cable caused considerable uproar among sports fans, who until then were used to watching games on free-to-air stations.
In May the Broadcasting Authority (BA) issued a directive forcing Melita into an arrangement with a terrestrial television station to broadcast the quarter-finals, semi-finals, the final and the third and fourth place game.
At that time, the BA had deemed illegal an exclusive agreement between Melita and Smash Television for the re-transmission of all 64 games as soon as the games ended, as “Smash TV does not necessarily reach a substantial proportion of the public” in terms of Article 6.1 of Legal Notice 158/2000, which states that “Broadcasters shall not broadcast on an exclusive basis events which are regarded by the Authority as being of major importance for society in such a way as to deprive a substantial proportion of the public of the possibility of following such events via live coverage or deferred coverage on free television.”
Eventually, Melita Cable reached agreements with PBS, NET TV and One TV to broadcast these eight games between them live, with all stations broadcasting the final.
On 29 January 2007, the BA had included “the opening ceremony, the opening game, the semifinals and the final of the U.E.F.A. European Football Championship” in its list of major events for Maltese society in terms of Article 6.1 of Legal Notice 158/2000, which therefore have to be available free or deferred on free-to-air television.
Two years ago, the controversy had been exacerbated by the fact that for the first time ever, Italian public broadcaster RAI had not acquired the rights to broadcast all the World Cup final games as these were snatched by satellite broadcaster Sky Italia.
Subsequently, RAI managed to acquire the terrestrial rights for the Italian team’s games at the World Cup. Fortunately enough, the Italian national team managed to make it to the final, thus Italian football fans were still able to watch their beloved national team on free-to-air television.
However this time, there will be full coverage of the UEFA games on the RAI channels after the Italian state broadcaster won the rights for all 31 games.

czahra@mediatoday.com.mt