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For many years people have been fortunate to follow the fortunes of their favourite club either on cable or free television channels.

This year was an exception: there was no telecast of any match much to the chagrin of Thais and also the expat community in the country.

There is a huge public outcry over the issue. The online community has been very vocal, voicing their indignation on several websites, including the popular pantip.com.

Some suspect that the relationship between Truevisions and ESPN Star Sports, which was believed to be strained ever since the cable television operator won the broadcasting rights of English Premier League matches, is the root cause of the problem. Not surprisingly, many held negative feelings towards Truevisions.        

In fact, what happened was simply a case of a failed business. In 2007, a relatively unknown Adamas earned the rights from the Football Association to broadcast the Cup in the Kingdom for four years starting this season.

The multimillion deal also included the Community Shield game and England team's friendlies at home as well as its home fixtures in the 2010 World Cup and 2012 European Championship qualifiers.

With English football in high demand in this soccermad country, the company firmly believed it would be a profitable investment. However, things did not go as it had expected. The firm struggled to find a client.

It was understood that Truevisions found it uncomfortable to make a deal with Adamas as the cable broadcaster deemed it as an unnecessary expense considering that they normally televise the Cup games via ESPN and Star Sports for which they pay huge amount of money each year.

Channel 7, dubbed as the Cup station, was also reluctant to meet the price Adamas had asked as they were not sure whether they could get enough commercials to break even during this gloomy economic times.

With the competition already halfway, the prospect of watching the Cup matches looked increasingly grim. However, there were fresh hopes following reports that the contract between FA and Adamas was cancelled and FA were ready to negotiate with both cable and terrestrial broadcasters.

Nattawut Pratuangsilpa, Truevisions' supervisor of marketing, said the company is ready to negotiate. "Of course, we're keen to secure the contract as we want to bring top sporting events to the living rooms of the fans. However, the price should be reasonable given that the competition is already in the middle stages.

"I don't think we could watch the fifth round matches, scheduled for February 14 and 15, as there are no games involving big teams. However, it is likely that we will cover the event from the next round where there will be some intriguing matchups," said Nattawut.       

Daily Xpress tried to contact Adamas for clarification but the company was not ready to talk on the subject.