Less than 10 days before the UEFA European Championship finals, which kick off in Austria and Switzerland on 7 June, it looks like none of the Maltese network operators or broadcasters will be bidding for the media rights for this tournament.
Industry sources told MaltaToday one of the reasons why GO Plus chose not to bid for the exclusive rights for the finals, was the elimination of the English national team from the qualifiers, resulting in less interest in the championships from the sizeable amount of England supporters in Malta.
But another reason they were not bidding was the fact that there will be full free-to-air coverage of the UEFA games on RAI channels after the Italian state broadcaster won the rights for all 31 games, making the acquisition of exclusive rights not viable.
A spokesperson for the other network operator, Melita Cable, said it was not bidding for the Euro 2008 media rights in view of RAI’s coverage on free-to-air television. “Moreover, EuroSport – another channel carried by Melita Cable – will be broadcasting the games on a delayed basis. In the context of this scenario Melita Cable has not submitted any bid for TV rights for the forthcoming EURO 2008 Championships and there are no ongoing negotiations in this regard.”
Likewise, mobile phone operator Vodafone Malta said that the company hadn’t submitted a bid for the Euro 2008 media rights.
Two years ago, 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, therefore exclusive rights were feasible.
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.
Wolfgang Resch, spokesperson for Euro 2008 SA, the organisers of the UEFA European Championship, two weeks ago told sister paper BusinessToday: “The situation hasn’t changed, the media rights for Malta are still not assigned.”
For the first time in the history of UEFA, the television rights for the European Football Championship final round have been 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.

czahra@mediatoday.com.mt