PETER CHRISTOPHER
peter.christopher@guardian.co.tt
After almost two years of unsuccessfully negotiating the broadcast of live English Premier league games on Digicel and Flow cable packages, the Verticast Media Group has filed an anti-competitive lawsuit against the telecommuncation companies.
In a release forwarded to the Guardian by Verticast president and CEO Oliver McIntosh, the company said it filed the lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Jamaica earlier this week.
Verticast is the holder of English Premier League (EPL) broadcast rights in the Caribbean and the operators of the CSport cable channels and website.
The company said it sued defendants Digicel (Jamaica), Columbus Communications Jamaica and Cable&Wireless Jamaica for restricting Verticast’s access on their pay television cable networks. Columbus COmmunications and Cable&Wireless are both subsidiaries of Liberty Latin America.
Verticast said, “This action reflects Verticast’s unwavering commitment to ensuring that consumers are not harmed by anti-competitive behaviour where new entrants are hindered and consumer choices are restricted, as has been the case regarding VertiCast’s channels and content offering.”
In the lawsuit, VertiCast alleges the defendants employed anti-competitive practices to exclude Verticast channels CSport & CSport2 from their pay television cable networks. The company has argued this would stifle competition and limit consumer options.
Verticast said, “Upon launch of the Verticast channels CSport and CSport2 with the (English) Premier League, FIFA World Cup and other premium content, VertiCast signed broadcast deals with more than 20 cable operators regionally at market rates. Despite VertiCast offering market terms, there have been no commercial terms in response from the defendants. This refusal, VertiCast contends, obstructs consumer access to content and distribution, undermining fair competition.”
The statement continued, “VertiCast invested in content and distribution to create channels with content that is in high demand by consumers, such as the English Premier League. We have gone above and beyond to work with the defendants to provide their consumers with access. These attempts at negotiations have not been successful and thus we had no option but to stand up for both consumers rights and the rights of media companies in the industry.”
Verticast secured the rights to the EPL in 2022 ahead of the league’s 2022/2023 season. Since then, the company has been unable come to an agreement with Flow and Digicel, two of the largest cable providers in the Caribbean. In August 2022, Verticast issued an open letter to Flow, which is part of the Liberty Latin America group, urging the company to negotiate terms to allow the EPL to be broadcast via the cable provider.
Flow, however, stated it was unable to come to an agreement with Verticast citing concern over the cost, while Digicel simply commented it would be unable to broadcast the league.
This left TSTT affiliate Amplia, which commands less of the market than both Digicel and Flow, as the only cable provider in T&T with CSport channels which broadcast the league. Forty-nine per cent of TSTT is owned by Liberty Latin America.
After the conclusion of the 2022/2023, McIntosh once again made a call for Flow and Digicel to renegotiate but once again no deal was made, in an interview published in the Business Guardian on June 22, 2023.
However since February, CSport has been unable to broadcast live matches of the Premier League, leaving much of Caribbean without the option to view live matches through official or “legal” channels, as reported in Thursday’s Business Guardian.
McIntosh is a former investment banker who helped found SportsMax in 2002.
When Digicel acquired a majority stake in International Media Content, the parent company of SportsMax, in 2014, McIntosh stayed on to run the company as CEO. He resigned from the company in 2021 and founded Verticast in 2022.
In a response to the Guardian’s question concerning the status of the broadcast in the region, the EPL, said it had no comment at this time on the ongoing blackout in the Caribbean.