(Yicai Global) Sept. 4 -- PPTV, the sports event broadcasting unit under Chinese retailer Suning Holdings Group, has had its partnership terminated with England’s Premier League, the top-level of the English football league system and the world’s most-watched sports association. The pair had earlier become embroiled in disputes over copyright payments. The PL also announced the end of the contract with the Chinese online broadcaster, but said it will not comment further on the incident yesterday.

The global spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has already brought many challenges, among which the negotiations over copyrights stood out, as PPTV and the PL failed to reach an agreement via the talks. “The company will thus cease its cooperation with the PL, though it has already paid in advance in excess of the amount of royalties for upcoming periods of copyright use, as per the agreement,” PPTV declared on its official account on China’s Twitter-like Weibo yesterday.

PPTV won the bid for the exclusive streaming rights to PL games from this year to 2022 through all media channels in both the Chinese mainland and Macau, with the value of corresponding royalties totaling CNY721 million (USD105.4 million) for three years, a record price for PL’s overseas rights.

The Chinese sports games streamer paid about half of the agreed fees to the English football league when the deferred matches actually reached less than 20 percent of the planned three years, it told Xinhua News Agency, but the football league demanded PPTV pay 80 percent of the total royalties for the three-year broadcasting rights in March.

The company’s strategy will not change, PPTV remarked on this of contract termination, adding adjustments to copyright arrangements and corresponding policies are quite normal based on the facts and its future strategies, and the platform will continue to focus on providing high-quality services for its users, sports fans, copyright owners and partners. PPTV still holds exclusive rights to Europe’s other four biggest top-flight leagues, to wit Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1.

PPTV is not without a fallback position, however. The opening game of Chinese Super League, the highest tier of professional football in China, drew over 30 million views, and the total for the first eight rounds of this season’s CSL was more than 500 million in an annual 12.1 percent rise, according to PPTV’s official statistics. The online broadcaster’s newly-added users accounted for about 20 percent of the total after this season’ CSL games resumed.

Editor: Ben Armour