Ethiopia’s state-owned broadcaster, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation could be on the verge of a serious FIFA sanction that could see the organization excluded from the world football governing body’s coterie of broadcasters and thus unable to purchase commercial rights from FIFA directly or indirectly.
The EBC could also be at the center of a lawsuit from FIFA with the broadcasting corporation reported to have aired games to its audience it didn’t have rights over.
The Ethiopian media group prior to the planetary football bonanza in Qatar did purchase broadcast rights for a limited number of games but was discovered to be illegally Broadcasting a larger number of games it didn’t have authorization to broadcast.
The action triggered FIFA’s free-to-air licensee for the territory New World Tv to bar the Ethiopian media access to the broadcast signal a few days after the start of the Tournament.
While the act was meant to curb the unlawful broadcast of games, a monitoring body set up to supervise the airing of world cup games realized that the EBC rather continued with the violations, further beaming games to its audience.
FIFA has now threatened to take legal action against the Ethiopian broadcaster as it seeks to preserve the rights of other media companies that purchased greater rights for the coverage of the world cup.
