THE Professional Football Association of Jamaica (PFAJ) and Digicel Premier League (DPL) broadcast sponsors CVM TV have severed ties after failing to come to an amicable financial agreement on the production cost, the Sunday Observer has learnt.

CVM TV, which in 2009 won the long-running broadcasting rights battle for three years ahead of rivals TVJ, has been replaced by local cable station Hype TV.

In a press release from the PFAJ on Friday, the changes were announced.

“The Professional Football Association of Jamaica as of Sunday, November 14, 2010 has entered into new arrangements for airing Digicel Premier League games. The games will be aired exclusively on Hype TV,” the release stated.

“This change from the usual broadcasting arrangement is the start of a media reordering of the Digicel Premier League to be announced shortly,” it said.

But CVM TV’s director of sponsorship, Ronnie Sutherland, told the Sunday Observer his organisation could not accommodate the “ad hoc” arrangements of the PFAJ which wanted to outsource the production to another entity.

“We were simply not prepared to continue with the ad hoc arrangements of the PLCA; it was inconvenient to us and it was happening at a tremendous cost,” said Sutherland.

He added: “When we entered into this thing, we had a long-term prospective and so everything that we did was in the context over the long term.

“We’re sadden by the departure, but we could not continue with the uncertainty of the arrangements by round to round,” Sutherland explained.

At the start of the DPL 2009/10 season,

Edward Seaga, chairman of the Premier League Clubs Association (PLCA) and president of Tivoli Gardens, said the shift from TVJ was mainly because they and CVM TV were “seeing eye to eye”.

But it is understood that the production cost to air the games proved a deterrent as the production cost to air the matches cost CVM TV approximately $30m annually and according to Sutherland, the PLCA wanted another entity to do the production with CVM TV doing the airing at the start of the season.

That never materialised and CVM TV agreed to assist and produce the first-round matches until the new producers were up and shooting.

So with the second round set of games scheduled to start today, CVM TV were again asked to fill in.

Hype TV is a local cable station mostly known for its entertainment package with a growing market across the island. It has been around for over 10 years and is owned by Johan Dawes.

— H Walker