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A great World Cup, but for the Hesgoal ban: illegal streaming and sports

IVAN OJAKOL 

What you need to know:

Uganda has had its fair share of streaming sorts wars-URU vs Kawowo Sports et al and now with serious investors in the sports broadcast side of things like NBS Sports and Fufa TV, we have certainly not seen the last of them especially with either/or both the Magogo Bill and the government's Physical Activity and Sports Bill becoming Uganda's Sports law soon. The two Bills both contain provisions prohibiting unauthorized broadcasting through electronic mediums of sports events.

A favourite streaming platform www.hesgoal.com “Hesgoal” was shut down. Hesgoal and its ilk have for a long time given us the liberty of doing something illegal consciously, but while enjoying it as we savoured low-quality sports streaming at a relatively cheaper cost. If you go on the site right now it says it was taken over pursuant to a warrant by a U.S Court for alleged copyright infringement. Interestingly, this comes during the World Cup.

This column has in the past couple of weeks explored the subject of who owns the World Cup. The verdict is that capitalistic interests own the tournament. This column has also previously carried pieces. “Discovery Sports Limited and its broadcasting ban: excessive?”, “As sports broadcasting enters a new era in Uganda, we must make it work” and “We should pay attention to judgment in Multichoice Kenya vs. Safaricom & Others” and a series of articles on the Intellectual Property Rights around the World Cup. The readers of this column are encouraged to re-read those articles together with this one.

The forever debate on whether sports is private or public, elitist or egalitarian is at the heart of this ban on Hesgoal.com. On one hand is Fifa’s rights holders who have invested immensely in getting the rights to bring the World Cup to the world and on the other one is, except for a few subscribers to beIN Sports or DSTV and SuperSport, the rest of us that want to watch and have been watching Sofyan Amrabat, Azzedine Ounahi and the Moroccan fairytale at the World Cup and are waiting with bated breath for the Messi-Mbappe finale, a last dance for the Argentine magician via a less expensive, on-the-go medium that can be accessed easily with only internet data being the enabling requirement.

These rights holders of course have their equivalent of streaming platforms. This columnist is interested in statistics showing the number of users of the same given the level of angst portrayed on social media when the news came through that Hesgoal had been seized.

The internet through some of its original concepts such as “net neutrality”- an open, equal internet for everyone, with unrestricted access, democratized access to information. Sports, a public good at its heart, and the internet looked like a match made in heaven. But as capitalistic interests took over the so-called "global game" and as governments got interested in regulating the internet for both valid and other reasons, that union might be on the verge of collapse.

Despite FIFA and other sports bodies’ aggressive, sometimes overly exaggerated attempts at protecting their Intellectual Property (IP) and media rights as this column has detailed previously, there is still a debate among some of the brightest minds in the IP Law field that sports events should not have the same level of protection as other traditional IP areas because of sports social-Impact role in society.

Uganda has had its fair share of streaming sorts wars-URU vs Kawowo Sports et al and now with serious investors in the sports broadcast side of things like NBS Sports and Fufa TV, we have certainly not seen the last of them especially with either/or both the Magogo Bill and the government's Physical Activity and Sports Bill becoming Uganda's Sports law soon. The two Bills both contain provisions prohibiting unauthorized broadcasting through electronic mediums of sports events.

This columnist is all for Investors in sports eventually reaping their rewards, especially in a still amateur sports setting like Uganda as is currently, but in setting the rules, we must tread carefully so as not to restrict access and instead disinterest the majority of young people. The cliched balancing act must be found somewhere.

Hesgoal might be dead, but its spirit will live on.

Ojakol is a Sports Lawyer, Partner at Matrix Advocates

, and Law Lecturer at IUEA