Brazilian media group Globo decided against showing live coverage of the Spain v Tahiti game last night (Thursday) at the Fifa Confederations Cup national football team tournament after opting to provide coverage of the ongoing protests on the streets of Brazil.
Globo said that under the terms of its rights deal with Fifa, football’s global governing body, the broadcaster would not have been allowed to cut away to coverage of the protests if it had started showing the match.
“By Fifa’s standards, if the transmission of a match starts, it cannot be stopped,” Globo said, according to the DPA news agency.
“Although we had planned to show the Spain v Tahiti match, we chose to continue with our normal programming to give us more flexibility to accommodate coverage of the dozens of demonstrations across several Brazilian cities.”