Stanley Wright, the president and chief executive of local cable company World on Wireless, is concerned about how the broadcast rights for the upcoming Winter Olympics and the subsequent coverage will affect his customers.

Jamaican-based company International Media Content Ltd announced this week that it had been awarded the exclusive broadcast rights in the Caribbean region for the XXII Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Subscribers who already have SportsMax as part of their cable package will be able to view the Games but others will have to pay a $22 fee to get the package.

“The Olympics are the foremost of sporting events, other than the World Cup, and for people to have to pay to watch it is wrong,” Wright said.

“It’s the way in which the rights have been provided and, equally important, how it is being delivered to us. We are evaluating the situation ourselves because we are not happy with it. We’re looking at how we can make it more available to our customers as it stands right now.

“As the rights have been delivered to us, and the notification given to us, the Winter Olympics will only be available on SportsMax on the Max Pack, which includes SportsMax and SportsMax 2. Anyone who is subscribing to it will be fine. Those are the only channels we are supposedly allowed to show it on.

“Unfortunately they are a premium sports package and customers who are not already subscribing to that package will have to subscribe to it in order to watch the Olympics. We have a number of customers who don’t subscribe to it and if they want to watch the Olympics, that is what they are going to have to do.”

The Games will run from February 7 to 23 and locals will hope to see Bermudian Tucker Murphy in action during cross-country skiing. Vanessa James, the French figure skater, also has local connections through her Bermudian father. She was born in Canada and lived in Bermuda until the age of 10 when her family moved to Virginia.

Wright said that WOW was considering other options for its viewers for coverage of the Games. “We haven’t finalised anything but once we have we will make an announcement as to what we are going to do,” he said. “NBC got the North American rights and then different rights were given off. They told us they are changing their feeds to programming outside the US, so MSNBC, CNBC and NBC Sports will be blacked out by them.

“IMC, who have the [Caribbean] rights, told us we have to black out any other channels so the Canadian channels will have to be blacked out as well. We are looking at some options, but unfortunately we are bound by these rights.”

The issues of broadcast rights and subsequent level of coverage comes up with every big event and will likely surface again this summer during the World Cup finals in Brazil.

“To put some perspective to it, rights are not inexpensive, so commercially could either us or CableVision afford to obtain certain rights?” Wright asked. “If you start looking at the cost of these rights, then the question becomes how do you recoup that? Customers want to see it and we would like to show it, but at the end of the day, who pays for it?

“The other thing that we don’t know is what exactly are they going to show. Are we going to receive something similar to what we received in the Summer Olympics, which we all know was a disaster.

“We are looking into the matter to figure if there is anything we can negotiate to do differently that may help our subscribers, which we need to do in the next week or so. The impact is not felt until it is seen. Hopefully by next week we have what we are trying to do, resolved and then make an announcement to our customers.”

Terry Roberson, the CableVision chief executive, said yesterday: “We, along with all other cable companies and broadcasters in the Caribbean region and Bermuda, received notice on January 21 from IMC stating that, although coverage is expected on a number of channels originating from North America, this coverage must be blacked out during broadcast of all Olympic events.

“This includes coverage on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC and CTV. We regret any inconvenience this may cause our valued customers, but we trust they will understand the necessity of complying with these international distribution contracts, which are outside of our control. On the other hand, we are pleased to be bringing viewers the coverage that is available to Bermuda and hope they will understand these requirements.”