Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke has defended the new US broadcast rights deal signed by world football’s governing body, stating it did not break any “international rules.”
US broadcasters ESPN and Univision this month expressed their disappointment after Fifa awarded the rights to its four-year cycle from 2023 to 2026 without an open bidding process.
Fifa renewed rights deals with the Fox network and pay-television broadcaster Telemundo in the US, with the packages including the 2026 World Cup, an event for which the US has been strongly linked to a bid.
Speaking today (Wednesday), Valcke acknowledged that awarding Fox rights to the 2026 World Cup avoided possible legal action from the broadcaster, which has commitments to NFL and college American football in November and December.
Fifa yesterday recommended that November-December be recommended as the dates for Qatar’s staging of the 2022 World Cup. Fifa’s new deal with Fox extended its rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, a contract the broadcaster signed more than three years ago when Fifa was still insisting that Qatar 2022 would be staged in the World Cup’s traditional June-July slot.
“We have done what we had to do in order to protect Fifa and to protect the organisation of the World Cup and without any breach of any international rules on the business side of this negotiation,” Valcke said, according to the Associated Press news agency.