Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk heads the ball during the English Premier League match against Sheffield United at Anfield in Liverpool on January 2. Photo: AFP

Foreign media claims that China's state sports broadcaster has canceled the English Premier League are groundless, as broadcasts of the games have merely been moved to the channel's high definition digital channel CCTV Sports Plus, and have not been scrapped, an industry insider told the Global Times, noting the reason for the change remains unclear. 

A Bloomberg report on Thursday said that the state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV), is "taking English Premier League football matches off the air," attributing the change to souring international relations between China and the UK. 

The report was published after CCTV Sports changed its scheduled broadcast of the Chelsea-Liverpool match on Wednesday (3:45 am Thursday in China) to the digital channel, but the claim that the airing of the game was completely scrapped is undoubtedly false. 

The game was also rebroadcast later on Thursday morning, a CCTV Sports program list showed on Thursday. An originally scheduled game between Leicester City and Manchester United set to air on CCTV Sports on Sunday has also been moved to CCTV Sports Plus, cctv.com shows.

An insider told the Global Times that blaming the channel change on souring relations between China and the UK is groundless.

"It is possible that CCTV Sports made the change for viewership or broadcast reasons," said the insider, who prefers to be anonymous, on Thursday. 

CCTV has only limited rights to broadcast Premier League games, so only four games are usually broadcast for every round on CCTV Sports along with its high definition digital channel. 

The Premier League, which is regarded as the world's most lucrative football league, is mainly broadcast as pay-per-view events on live streaming platform PPTV. 

Some fans have questioned whether the case is politically motivated, as they fear the Premier League will be the next victim after the NBA was pulled from the air after Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey's tweet in support of the Hong Kong protests, which have been often-violent and secessionist, in October 2019. 

But a Beijing-based sports commentator surnames Luo believes that the English Premier League is a "different kettle of fish." 

"Airing of the NBA games was suspended due to Morey's tweet, but this time no one from the Premier League has done anything offensive," he told the Global Times. "They are two completely different cases."

This is not the first time that the Premier League has been abruptly pulled from CCTV Sports. A previous hiatus lasted from 2003 to 2015 due to issues concerning broadcasting rights. 

CCTV Sports canceled part of the live stream of Spain's La Liga games at the end of the 2014-15 season, a move which analysts at the time believed was due to the state broadcaster's failure to reach an agreement with La Liga over the broadcast rights for future seasons.