The im­pact of the pend­ing clo­sure of the Caribbean’s sports ca­ble net­work, Sports­Max, is set to see key changes in the re­gion’s ecosys­tem for sports.

On Mon­day (Ju­ly 7), Dig­i­cel, the net­work’s par­ent body, an­nounced its in­ten­tion to close the doors of Sports­Max with a last-ditch broad­cast on Au­gust 8 and the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of its print me­dia plat­form, Loop. Dig­i­cel Group Chief Busi­ness Of­fi­cer Liam Don­nel­ly con­firmed the de­vel­op­ment in a let­ter ear­li­er this week. The move, it is un­der­stood, sig­nalled a move away from con­sumer-fac­ing me­dia to fo­cus on busi­ness-crit­i­cal ser­vices like In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT), cy­ber, and cloud so­lu­tions.

In T&T, where Sports­Max ser­vice was heav­i­ly utilised by the foot­ball’s par­ent body – the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) – the im­me­di­ate re­sponse has been to seek the ser­vice of an­oth­er provider.

For more the last 23 years, Sports­Max has been a fix­ture in sports broad­cast­ing, ser­vic­ing the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean of an es­ti­mat­ed sev­en mil­lion peo­ple, a mar­ket that cov­ers the bor­ders of the Caribbean re­gion in all sports, in­clud­ing West In­dies crick­et, the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), CARIF­TA Games, and re­gion­al ath­let­ics meets, to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions like the Eng­lish Pre­mier League, La Liga, UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League, NBA, and NFL.

Chris Dehring, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Crick­et West In­dies, and founder of Sports­Max be­lieves the sat­u­ra­tion of sports on the mar­ket would have de­creased the de­mand.

Re­fer­ring to the sport of crick­et, Dehring said, “The mon­e­tary re­wards aren’t the same be­cause there are so many more prod­ucts on the mar­ket. For in­stance, West In­dies crick­et it’s all crick­et. There’s a lot of crick­et, whether it is fran­chise crick­et, on the mar­ket that is be­ing gob­bled up, so the mon­ey is be­ing gob­bled up.”

“I can tell you that the last Aus­tralian deal that I had done be­fore I left the West In­dies Crick­et Board, we got it for about two and a half mil­lion (US$2.5mil­lion) and that bare­ly cov­ered the pro­duc­tion bill, but at least it cov­ered the pro­duc­tion bill.”

He said, “This year, the pro­duc­tion bill is about the same but you’re on­ly get­ting about US$400, 000 out of Aus­tralia, and that doesn’t have a lot to do with West In­dies, be­cause of course you’ll ex­pect that the Aus­tralian pub­lic wants to see the Aus­tralian team the same way, but it has a lot to do with the con­sol­i­da­tion that’s tak­ing place in the Aus­tralian mar­ket.”

Merere Gon­za­les, pres­i­dent of the SS­FL, ad­mit­ted his or­gan­i­sa­tion was hard-hit by the de­vel­op­ment, as Sports­Max was their main spon­sor. “Since 2015, we’ve had a close re­la­tion­ship with Sports­max/Dig­i­cel. As a mat­ter of fact, they’ve been our ti­tle spon­sor for the broad­cast­ing of games for which we have a three-year con­tract, and this is the third year of the con­tract. We un­der­stand it was a busi­ness arrange­ment at that lev­el, and we’re hop­ing that some am­i­ca­ble, ami­able, re­spectable agree­ment can be worked out, even while they’ve in­di­cat­ed that they would have their last broad­cast­ing event on the 8th of Au­gust and that out­stand­ing con­trac­tu­al agree­ments would be ad­dressed in a very pro­fes­sion­al way.”

The SS­FL is con­sid­ered one of the key youth de­vel­op­ment tour­na­ments in T&T, and through Sports­Max, it has been a key pro­mo­tion­al av­enue for young play­ers seek­ing moves to their na­tion­al teams, abroad on tri­als or pur­su­ing schol­ar­ships in the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, “Cer­tain­ly, the in­ten­tion is with that be­ing the present sit­u­a­tion as it is. A con­tin­gency plan is al­ready be­ing pur­sued and put in place. We have meet­ings that will be held very soon with the ex­ec­u­tive and the Gen­er­al Coun­cil, but quite in­ter­est­ing­ly, there are sev­er­al lo­cal me­dia en­ti­ties in par­tic­u­lar which have in­di­cat­ed in­ter­ests in one way or an­oth­er, so with that be­ing said, we’re in dis­cus­sions with them.”

He con­tin­ued, “Even more im­por­tant is to un­der­stand that Sports­Max/Dig­i­cel would have been the SS­FL’s biggest rev­enue-earn­ing en­ti­ty in our bud­get on an an­nu­al ba­sis when we have our com­pe­ti­tions, so we’re trust­ing that we would still be able to ne­go­ti­ate and still have some lev­el of re­spectable agree­ment with the oth­er en­ti­ties.”

For view­ers and sports or­gan­i­sa­tions, the com­ing clo­sure of Sports­Max rais­es con­cerns about the cov­er­age of sports in the fu­ture for the Caribbean, where league or­gan­is­ers, fed­er­a­tions, and event or­gan­is­ers will have to find new broad­cast part­ners to main­tain vis­i­bil­i­ty.

T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent, Kieron Ed­wards, said that while Sports­Max has been a tremen­dous help for the coun­try’s top-flight T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League, their chal­lenge will be to get a provider to fit the TTFA’s needs.

“The part­ner­ship with Sports­Max bore fruit for the TTPFL and, by ex­ten­sion, the TTFA, the par­ty that ran the league for the last three sea­sons. So, it’s some­thing you have to bal­ance in terms of what you get. I think Sports­Max has been in the re­gion for the last cou­ple of years, or as long as I can re­mem­ber. Sports­Max’s pro­duc­tion and air­ing of games, their lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism – they’ve raised the bar in terms of pro­duc­tion and sports, and not just foot­ball, but sports in the re­gion. There is al­ways a cost to it, but there are cre­ative ways to re­cov­er that cost and use that cost with your brand­ing of any league.”

Quizzed on the TTFA’s al­ter­na­tive to Sports­Max, Ed­wards said, “We were al­ready go­ing to send out to ten­der to dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies. We did some work with WAVE-TV, a lo­cal group that did their pro­duc­tion, and we had some talks with some oth­er groups want­i­ng to be part of the ecosys­tem of the TTFA when it comes to pro­duc­tion and broad­cast­ing. We have the WoLF League, we have the Re­pub­lic Bank Youth League, and we have dif­fer­ent leagues that fall un­der the am­bit of the TTFA. So, we would send out for ten­ders in keep­ing with our poli­cies and pro­ce­dures, and we would look at the best pos­si­ble fit for the FA when that time comes.”

“We are still part­ner­ing with FI­FA Plus, so the stan­dard and re­quire­ments that FI­FA Plus re­quire will al­ways be set, so we still have that part­ner­ship with FI­FA Plus in terms of broad­cast­ing games in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, so it’s work­ing out in terms of the pro­duc­tion side.”

The T&T foot­ball boss al­so said they’ve had dis­cus­sions with free-to-air sta­tions as part of their con­tin­gen­cies for the clo­sure of Sports­Max.