That came days after suggestions that Suning had sent a letter threatening to cancel (in an effort to renegotiate their deal), but the decision was taken out of the Chinese company’s hands at a meeting of Premier League chairmen.

That ended what at the time it was signed was the biggest broadcast deal in Premier League, nay global football history, just a year in.

There had been a dispute over an unpaid payment in March, which is understood to relate to future football matches, rather than those that were part of the season that was on pause at the time as the UK battled the coronavirus pandemic.

The league resumed in June with all the remaining games played. Not that fans in China saw them all.

Liverpool’s penultimate game against Chelsea was moved from state broadcaster CCTV-5, a channel widely available throughout the country on terrestrial television, to sister channel CCTV-5+, a digital-only offering that has a fraction of the coverage across China.

That happened at short notice and indicated that all was not well, something that was brushed under the carpet at the time but now looks like an augur of impending doom.

PP Sports streamed all of the final round of the season to its subscribers, but they will stream no more.

That is also assuming that this will not become political in a country where everything is.

The English clubs have come to rely on that money and in what was already a fiscally precarious situation because of the pandemic, there has to be a genuine fear that the house of cards will come crashing down at some clubs.

“The global epidemic has brought many challenges, which are even more prominent in copyright negotiations. After many rounds of talks, PP Sports and the Premier League have differences in copyright value, and we regret that we have not been able to reach an agreement with the Premier League at present.”

The Premier League’s statement was rather more brusque.

“The Premier League confirms that it has today terminated its agreements for #PL coverage in China with its licensee in that territory,” their communications department wrote on Twitter. “The #PL will not be commenting further on the matter at this stage.”

When both sides do comment further we can expect two very different stories as to how and why this ended.

This all came on the same day that the Houston Rockets, once the home of Yao Ming and for that very reason China’s favourite NBA team, battled past the Oklahoma City Thunder to make their way to a second round meeting with the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Lakers are now arguably China’s team. Kobe Bryant remains hugely popular in the country and this is the team’s first play-offs since he died in January. They are led by LeBron James, another hugely popular player. It all conspires to make the Lakers the team to watch for Chinese fans.

They can’t though. Not now they are playing the Rockets. The Texan outfit are blacklisted because of the ongoing fallout from GM Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong’s anti-government protesters last October.

The NBA was pulled from CCTV and remains off air, and online streaming partner Tencent blacked out the Rockets. That has eased somewhat with match reports and box scores but they are still off the schedules.

That blackout, if it was ever going to end, would surely be this series, but as the PPTV and Premier League fallout suggests, some things are bigger than money.

With government-level disputes raging between Beijing on one side and the White House and Westminster on the other, there is going to be collateral damage.

For now, that appears to be the two most successful overseas sports leagues that have entered the China market.

What happens next with either is anyone’s guess but you can guarantee that Chinese fans who want to watch will not miss out on seeing their team in action.

The only thing wilder than these broadcast disputes is the proliferation of readily available illegal streams online. Everyone but those Chinese fans is set to miss out.