If there was the slightest doubt that the Asian Football Federation is a highly politicized body with members supporting the wealthy such as Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf countries in general, all those doubts have been eliminated with the recent move by AFC in the award of broadcasting right. 

The TV broadcast right of the Asian Competitions for Middle East and North Africa has been awarded to Bein Sports for the last few years. The Qatari owned broadcasters had a virtual monopoly on all the competitions including the FIFA World Cup, AFC Asian Cup and the AFC Champions League.

After the Saudi-Led boycott of Qatar and the break of diplomatic and economical relationship between the two countries leading to severe animosity, the Saudi’s were not pleased to have a Qatari organization control the broadcasting of football matches and major sporting events in their country. By hook and crook and in defiance to all International laws and regulations, they established their own station, albeit a pirate station and stole the FIFA and AFC matches that were exclusively awarded to Bein Sports without any consent or rights award.

Despite the outcries , condemnations, threats of legal actions and loads of other statement against piracy and intellectual property by the Americans and Europeans, the Saudi continued defying the international copyright laws with no fear of reprisal. The pirate stations that is broadcast on Arabsat which is based in Riyadh , continues its piracy unabated till the writing of this article. The AFC has condemned this piracy but practically has done nothing to stop it because it is Saudi based. There were always suspicions that the Saudi would not have carried out such piracy without support or consent within the governing body of Asian football, AFC and perhaps FIFA too.

Yesterday, the AFC issued an Invitation to Tender (ITT) for its package of football media rights for the 2021-2024 cycle in Saudi Arabia only!! Currently the rights are not country specific but regional. The Saudi case is an exception to the rules.

There are a lot of legality involved in such a move but the main question that begs itself is on what basis the AFC awards a broadcasting right for one country only? what if the Saudi government is displeased with the winning tender and decides it wants to change it to broadcaster of a much more friendly obedient state government?

There has been many critics of the AFC preferential treatment afforded to Saudi Arabia. The Iranians are one big victims of the flagrant Saudi bias. All matches involving Iranian and Saudi teams have to be played on neutral ground simply because of the Saudi refusal to travel to Iran. AFC simply obeys the demands of Saudi Arabia which is supposed to have 1 vote only. With moves such as that, every football fan is entitles to question the infiltration of politics in Asian football while AFC always claims that politics should not interfere in football.

Questions have been asked about AFC decision making process and whether the executive committee has any authority or it is acting as a rubber stamp for the Saudi-backed President of the AFC Salman bin Ebrahim ? The Bahrain President has been re-elected unopposed for another term with all candidates withdrawing before the election.