WestStar TV has changed its previous broadcast schedule for World Cup 2010 matches this week and some of the upcoming games will not be broadcast live.

The reason that eight games will be televised on tape delay between Tuesday and Friday is partly because of how those games are scheduled.

FIFA (football’s international governing body) typically schedules the third and final games of the group stage World Cup matches to be played at the same time. This is done to avoid a situation that has occurred in previous World Cup tournaments where teams that already know they have made it through to the second round simply don’t play hard or even agree beforehand to end the game in a draw.

WestStar does have two channels available to broadcast the matches, but there is only one satellite feed available – so the company essentially has to pick which World Cup matches are broadcast live and which ones are delayed.

This means that a number of games coming up this week, such as USA v Algeria, Honduras v Switzerland, and Paraguay v New Zealand will be broadcast two to two-and-a-half hours late and fans will already know the outcome of the games before they watch them.

“We have no control over this and again, just to clarify, IMC (International Media Content Ltd.) is the only company with broadcasting rights for the Caribbean,” a WestStar spokesperson said last weekend.

The local TV station has already taken some heat for what is essentially a contractual ‘blackout’ of World Cup games being shown on ESPN and Univision in the Cayman Islands.

Some in Cayman who haven’t been able to view the World Cup games on ESPN (WestStar channel 30) since Sunday, 13 June, began angrily emailing the Caymanian Compass, asking why the coverage had been blacked out.

According to WestStar TV Operations Director Tracy Bradley, the blackout of the US-based broadcast network ESPN as well as Mexico-based Univision is due to distribution rights for the World Cup in the Caribbean. That arrangement allows WestStar to provide the World Cup only on its local channels, Cayman 27 and Island 24.

“Broadcasting rights are a major source of income for FIFA ... which sells distribution rights for specific regions and WestStar has acquired the broadcast distribution rights in the Cayman Islands,” a press release from the company stated.

“These rights require WestStar to only carry the feed delivered from IMC, the authorised re-seller in the Caribbean, to ensure the interests of the sponsors are protected. As a result, all (World Cup) feeds on the other cable channels have been blacked out.”

However, some TV viewers reported on Sunday that ESPN was on the air broadcasting the football matches again – for two games at least.