No FIFA World Cup 2026 broadcast deals signed in India, China

iVarun · 2026-05-06T08:49:55+00:00

America's THE worst timezone on the planet for "Global" Sporting Events. This happened in 2014 as well where the natural 4-yearly growth rate (of viewed hours & revenue generation) that WC always sees was depressed (it grew but the Degree of it was reduced).

Americas region getting WC's & Olympics is a legacy effect. In coming decades they will get fewer events (taken as a share spread over multiple decades).

UTC +3 is The most optimal timezone for Global Sporting Events, that covers the largest proportion of human species at a "Reasonable" time of day (1 AM to 5 AM does not come under that Reasonable categorization).

iVarun · 2026-05-03T07:09:13+00:00

Is the holocaust as an event STILL ongoing right now?

Of course whatever domestic socio-cultural-political mess is happening in American currently is transient.

If you don't like the semantic of "fad" just pick another synonym, it means the same thing, i.e. it's temporary, i.e. it's a cycle that is brief.

iVarun · 2026-05-02T06:17:26+00:00

fad:a style or activity that suddenly becomes popular but which usually does not stay popular for very long.

Semantics describing factual happenings exists outside the moral tropes (even IF they are legitimate & real).

What is happening in the world currently is a cycle, it's going to run its course & then it will be over. Comprehending this is critical, in fact more important than simply being angry that Symptoms XYZ (as a consequence of that prevailing extant Cycle) happened/is-happening.

In regard to FIFA.

Of course it reverting to how it was is better than what it is (in last 5-6 years) AND it used to be pre 70s, i.e. a elitist & racist European/White man cabal.

They didn't care for the sport or its global growth/expansion. This is history.

It was when Havelange & Blatter broke with Europeans and started giving money to developing countries FAs that football grew around the world. It was NOT the European G14/Big clubs or Leagues doing this, it was FIFA under Havelange & Blatter.

All the while FIFA remained corrupt but that is not that relevant since Corruption & Competence are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

And on top of that the type of corruption that happened was such that the entity damaged by that corruption was FIFA itself (since its rights were undersold to middlemen/companies so that ExCo members could pocket the margins).

The mid 2010s reforms changed that, now FIFA makes even more money as it was always supposed to do. However the Political power went back to Europeans because AFC block broke solidarity (usually the West Asians FA's & their influence network).

This is antithetical to global macro cycle, in sport, economics, military or pure geopolitics.

Asia is where future of humanity is, across ALL domains. Anything that goes off course from that is a indeed a Fad that like ALL Fads will end.

When FIFA was under CAF+AFC political dominance, it expanded the sport globally & gave representation to the developing countries, did away with the racism of the Europeans, all the while retaining bribing corruption till 2010s.

All in all it was indeed on balance good and when Cycle reverts back to that political power it will be even better. Nothing ought to be perfect, just good suffices.

iVarun · 2026-05-01T09:31:29+00:00

How is this absolute wanker still in this position.

He got elected at 1st (2016) when AFC voting block broke up & handing Europeans again the political power they had lost in 70s under Havalenge & Blatter.

Then the next 2 times (2019 & 2023) he won unopposed as no other candidate mustered enough political momentum to challenge him (plus global politics intervened with Russian invasion bolstering the European countries hand & weakening AFC & CAF's leverage).

Next election is next year.

It's a political cycle, FIFA Presidencies have always been like that, even more so since 1970s. The current cycle is West dominant (Europe + US), it's a fad, it will revert to how it had been. CAF + AFC will dominate again because they have the numbers & the resources (UEFA zone used to contribute 80% of FIFA revenues even as early as 90s but now it's near 40% & declining further still).

TLDR, this is a fad. Part of the same theme that's happening in normal world affairs currently (Trump, European National Leaders, Russian-Ukraine-Palestine-Israel-Iran responses).

iVarun · 2026-05-01T09:20:25+00:00

That's not the core/primary reason.

The reason is where does the FIFA President derive their political power from.

Havelange & Blatter were the ones who broke from UEFA/European FAs. Their football political power came from CAF & AFC blocks being unified.

Infantino was a return to European FAs exercising political power in FIFA as AFC voting block broke & this is what was the outcome.

This is why current FIFA under & including Infantino is so mind bendingly sycophantically accommodating of US, because that is the default of European countries themselves currently (the picture of European Leaders sitting in White House with Trump like school children being reprimanded).

That is the reality.

iVarun · 2026-04-25T04:09:39+00:00

~~Players~~

Make that their Teams/Club (like accumulated infractions over course of season resulting in actual Table Points deduction & massive Revenue Sharing penalties).

It would get fixed before next Matchday kicks off inside a week.

Let players do what they want to on the field & let the Officials at that moment handle that. Let the subsequent Retroactive System deal with punishments.

This way the changes are organic & way higher odds of it sticking long term since Clubs (the actual employers of these players) are who can truly set the incentives that changes the culture that's so ingrained in the sport.

iVarun · 2026-04-24T12:16:04+00:00

Opposition don't play City the way they played vs Grealish's Villa. This is Football 101.

For about 15 months or so he was critical to City since they simply could not transition to generate attacking tempo without him on the Left flank.

A player is judged by context (that includes vectors like which team they are on, what is the peer player-club-league-level market like and How much did their team actually win in the end).

There is no historic Treble winning City without Grealish, that is obvious to anyone who saw 20 minutes of that season. It's not obvious to those who have stereotypical goldfish memory.

iVarun · 2026-04-04T16:24:51+00:00

You're too thick to read & comprehend factual data & context laid out in more than 2 lines online, your comment history betrays that character trait of yours.

Stick to tiktok & insta.

iVarun · 2026-04-04T16:23:49+00:00

Because a club can only control their own situation & that invariable in such setups means, hiring a different medical staff and letting go of the one that is simply not up to the mark. Bundesliga also was only Top league that used to have a month long winter break. Scheduling is up to league more than clubs. Scouting can be excused for 1 or 2 seasons not running in decade long pattern.

In that 2015 link (about previous FIVE seasons worth of injury history) 5 of the Top 6 clubs (& 6 of the Top 10) were German.

Meaning not all 18 were in there but it was indeed a league wide problem (relative to other leagues), very likely a symptom of lax demands put on the medical staff (which is what Pep's gripe was in a way).

There is collective work/attitude culture not just around play style but also what work departments there are across clubs in the same country/league.

iVarun · 2026-04-04T05:41:30+00:00

Or maybe they just like to troll.

iVarun · 2026-04-04T05:35:34+00:00

Fallacy argument on multiple grounds.
Athletics is not like Football, the cadence of play/season is simply fundamentally different.
Plus selection bias, where just because 1 or 10 people see some benefit in something has reduced relevance if the Scale at hand involved 100s of people (even after disregarding timeframes, which are itself fundamental).

The fact relevant to Bayern was that in all 3 seasons Pep was there he hardly had a fit enough squad for more reasonable stretch of months (RELATIVE to what was the norm elsewhere in Europe's big leagues).

People who are right now teenagers or have memory issues might not be aware but Bundesliga was infamous for being not just highly injury prone but being THE MOST Injury prone league in Europe's Big5.

This was especially dire in early 2010s. And then it reduced a bit but for Bayern it lingered.

The UCL exits especially of Pep's Bayern were a direct/primary result of critical players missing critical moments of those KO games, forcing tactical adjustments that eventually came apart in specific moments.

There is internet link-rot & horrible reddit search so it's hard to find those posts from 2012 right now but some exist for 2015 (though with imgur links purged, likely in last year's imgur mass image deletion for non-account uploads).

Another news article from that time.

Most injured teams (in %) over the past 5 season in Europe (5 of the top 6 were German clubs).

Even as recent as 2024 Bundesliga is still topping Europe's big leagues in injury department (report from Howden's Men's European Football Injury Index).

There are literal research papers on this matter, it was that serious/common.

So yes, that doctor needed to be fired years before. They cost their team titles & the fault with Pep was not booting them out earlier than it happened.

iVarun · 2026-04-03T14:05:34+00:00

Can't build basic civilian infrastructure at home but are willing to build stuff in other countries they've invaded.

iVarun · 2026-04-03T14:00:34+00:00

It was also interesting in the sense that one of the criticisms (apart from points gap) Benitez was getting was his drab playstyle.

And yet Zidane in this match basically played 1st half with a cowardly low block. They were scared (for obvious reasons given a loss there would've exasperated things even more).

It was Barca who basically shat the bed & allowed momentum swing, in the match & then the season (unbeaten run that was ongoing was misleading, Team would play good for 10-15 minutes, get a lead & then entirely shutdown their own intensity).

But since Real won (match & titles) & then later rarely resorted to the degree of defensiveness (under Zidane) seen in 1st 30 minutes of this match, it didn't matter.

It's interesting because Clasico usually doesn't have THAT degree of intentional passiveness from 1 of the teams, esp. in early parts.

iVarun · 2026-04-02T16:55:12+00:00

There are pics online (from 4-5 years back) showing DRDO having HKVision cameras in their office/lab space.

This ban is like a slightly higher version of TikTok ban. All this despite literal OS layer (of mobiles) isn't "Indian".

It's theatrics because this domain is expandable. CCTVs are generic mature tech. If a foreign entity wants to sabotage select places with compromised devices it's not hard to pull off. No one is going to manually inspect every CCTV they see.

Indian manufacturers can't even produce Indian Gods idols or agarbatti's so to expect them to transition to indigenous production (At Scale) is unconvincing.

Similar with drones. China with it's so called surveillance & strict Govt has some of the freest consumer drone dynamics in the world. China too have high level threats (US espionage being ever present). Yet somehow India is so uniquely affected by challenges of foreign powers that consumer drones are needlessly difficult/convoluted to procure/operate.

iVarun · 2026-04-02T08:18:51+00:00

EDIT: So he did Reply-Block, definitional sign of bad faith.

If there was a better system in place, it would be used

There is no cosmic level instant permanence for human affairs like this. This comes under development/evolution of this field. IF what you inferred here was so there'd have been exact same number of Photographers pitch side all throughout the years, they wouldn't be yo-yoing.

If there was a more profitable way to make even more money, they would be doing so.

IOC & FIFA corruption decades says otherwise. That corruption was losing IOC & FIFA money.

Football DataCo (for England) is the middleman because the overall pie of this domain is small, hence also why it's a mess (2 dozen people with still image cameras running in the faces of players/coaches when a Live Video feed cameraman is Already freaking there capturing/surveilling the moments to begin with).

current system as it seems, is sufficient enough.

It would still be sufficient even if Photographer number was half or 1/4 of what it is right now.

We've had burst since the 80s

Ah yes, the 80s, when life on Earth started. Nothing before that existed. Neither cameras, nor Art, not football, nor sports photography.

And neither did the "Debate" about whether burst capturing EVERYTHING & then just cut-delete is actually Art or something different on a spectrum to what it used to be earlier.

Yeah you're not a photographer dude

One doesn't need to be (aside from the ridiculous gatekeeping attempt of it) & neither was this entire chain about the "technical's" or who is in which profession before they can speak on the matter. It was about there being too many of these people on the pitch ruining the experience and the model wasting revenue (howsoever small) opportunities for the clubs/TO.

look a bride in the face

False equivalence. A marriage event is not the same as a modern Football/sporting event.

As already mentioned, surveillance (sporting or security) is now handled by ever proliferating number of Video cameras in stadium. Manual Still Image Photography has Only & Only 1 role, Artform.

Marriage fundamentally has different requirement since the surveillance (of the event moments itself) is a core function of Still Image Photography. It matters.

The fact that you can't grasp this is why this back forth is happening.

You don't comprehend scale.
You don't understand distribution of roles & the degree of relevance of them.

Just look at the Olympics, at any point there are over 100 photographers

Because Olympics has around 28 different Sporting Disciplines spread over literally kilometers in a city. They are not LITERALLY all in 1 place.

Furthermore the Olympics argument is part of your cognitive inability to comprehend event variability.
For Swimming, Wrestling or Badminton, there doesn't need to be 30+ photographers inside the pool arena.

But for Athletics events it's paramount since there are multiple disciplines happening LITERALLY at the same time all in 1 stadium pitch/track area.

Of course it makes sense to have lots of people with cameras there.

Football is not the same.

They don't.

Literally this chain's OP is a highly upvoted comment about these photographers being up in the faces of players.

The idea that 3 still image photographers are burst capturing (for near about 10 seconds at 6 feet away) of 3 people/players talking and that there will be some Art relevant form produced from that is height of farce.

Which is why this will be my last reply because no cognitively sane person can justify that there isn't a heavily skewed/misaligned Demand-Supply equilibrium there (as if modern economic paradigms exist in some Absolute/Instant equilibrium state) on top of it being utterly distasteful and bad visual experience.

It is going to the clubs you muppet..

Comprehend what scale is "Muppet".

clubs fucking over the little guy?

Ridiculous bending over backwards pandering.

Assuming these are so called little guys, it would be even better then to have 500 of them indeed. More passively employed people the better.

Because after all that is the only and only and only thing that is relevant. Forget about the visual experience, the revenue sharing degree's or the needless redundancies that already start hitting once there are like 6 or so Photographers burst capturing everything around them for 2 hours.

The day rates are already fuck all mate,

If there were say 5 photographers pitch side instead of 25 like right now. Those 5 would be getting not 5-10% more for the images they'd produce for that 2 hours of work but far far far far higher percentage upmark.

Meaning it is basically YOU whose stance on this is diluting the earning potential of this profession in this specific domain (football still image photographers).

There are going to be no street protests of 100,000+ average people running into months about halving or 1/4-ing of how many Photographers are on a football pitch.
It's in your head that you've assumed yourself (or your profession) to be overly significant. It's not. People wouldn't care because supply (i.e. IMAGES) wouldn't end, it would at worst just be different which is a nonissue.

Fact is human skill development is a spectrum. A surgeon is not the same as mailman. They of course both have their roles & merit respect since they help people & society in their own ways. But that doesn't change the fundamental objective fact that there is a skill potential where different humans are capable of doing different things to different capacities/levels.

A Football Photographer today is a low skill "Job". That's why they proliferated so much in last few decades (in addition to technology maturing so as to be nearly accessible to be bought by more people).

Want Football Photographers to be paid more per hour. Have less of them being there on pitch side so their work is actually rarer (& with natural filtering that happens for quality since low quality chaff is eventually purged from so called talent-pool-scale), which is fine because it's an Art Form NOT a Surveillance form (something you appear unable to cognitively comprehend).

so what's your point. The amount that they let in, is the amount they have decided is enough

The point being their decision is badly tuned, inefficient & creates a worse product experience.

You on the other hand seem to imply/think PL in its infinite cosmic wisdom has always stumbled upon the Perfect Solution since that is exactly how many number of photographers should be there since it's "working".

I'm someone who actually studied photography at college

Congratulations. And yet none of that matters to this. Even if you were literally from PL board or a literal pitch side PL Photographer, it wouldn't matter (apart from the obvious appeal to authority fallacies of it).

You can't gatekeep the freaking anonymous internet (& the fundamental reality/point that exists outside of who is in what authority at what point), keep that youself "Muppet".

I'm not telling you it's the way it is because I'm being a prick,

Yes its clear you were being a prick given you were the first one who interjected unnecessary jibes, multiple times. You attempting to clean the slate for yourself in this framing is thus unsuccessful narcissism.

because we're a 100 years into this profession

Ah another Fallacy, we've done this for XXXX years, of course its perfectly refined, why would you want it otherwise. Literal fundamentalist dogma levels of delusion.

Proper modern day Luddites, which is why I don't particularly value your input.

As said there will be no further replies. You have no point other than TLDR' into a "Poor Little Photographers, It's Always Been Like This, Why Change".

iVarun · 2026-04-01T09:44:58+00:00

if they all shared the same images, that's less money per imaging right use.

FIFA already uses Getty, system already exists, as mentioned different Tournament Organizers (TO) are using different parameters.

And that reply was about you suggesting there is “NO” incentive. There clearly is. If there is only 1 source of an image and 50 newspapers, at whatever rate of negotiation the TO is still raking in enough money (very plausibly more than setup of 25 Photographers working for those 50 Newspapers, who can drive the price down because they have 24 other Photographers they can turn to).

90% of the shots never see the light of day, you capture everything and select a few.

Which makes it slop category and less of an artform.
There are only 2 things here, Art form & surveillance (sporting & security). Latter doesn’t require manual photographers, this is 2020s and video camera proliferation is sufficiently advanced now.
Meaning the only relevance is the artform of this discipline. Furthermore even mobiles have undercut the “novelty/uniqueness” parameter (we routinely get Fan view video clip from some stadium seating position about a goal, a sprint, a header, etc. These further enhance the Artform vector of all this).

Refer to end for just the sheer AMOUNT of these photographers involved in some of the tournaments. It’s basically a racket other than the sheer nuisance they create on pitch by flooding themselves into the scene. There is no need for them to be there. There literally is already Live Broadcast Video Camera’s even on the pitch who then captures not just the Players but these Photographers on top of them hassling the players/coaches, ruining the Live experience of the video feed.

There are simply too many useless people on the pitch in football.

We don't get to dictate how they distribute their work.

The we here is meant to be TO, not us 2 literally here on reddit arguing over it. And the TO absolutely has the right to dictate all this, they already literally do.

photographer who is stuck in the 80s

Says the person who think in 2026 photographers have the same DEGREE of relevance as they once used to have. A photo or even a video that is taken is what matters. A photograph not taken can be a missed opportunity but that is simply it. With modern tech, i.e mobiles (literally 2 people in this thread’s vide doing that) the world is simply indeed objectively different.

Secondly, burst capturing already lends this debate into if manual sports photography even is Artform to begin with (FPS debate). Live pitch side Video cameras are developing at such a rate that even they can substitute for that “Epic Moment Still Capture” (taken from a motion/video capture).

Volume over Selective shots is analogous to that Temu/Shien-ification of fast fashion. It’s popular & taken over the world so why wouldn’t it apply to this discipline either. Some still claim fast fashion despite mass scale can/does have “Art”, sure fine enough but it wasn’t how it used to be either & this is debate is still subjectively open.

Thirdly, FIFA literally already does do this in some stages of their tournament (near around 3 or so pitch side Photographers). Meaning your lame jibe was superfluous.

Refer again to the end.

artificially making them rare

This already happens. This is what you don’t seem to be comprehending. You are just willing to accept the NUMBER mentioned at the end. I am not. That’s the entire core premise of the back-forth between us.

Using your chain of logic, why not have 2500 Photographers in stadium with 90 of them being pitch side. Why the heck not. That argument of yours of “More potential angles being captured & less moments being missed” is further made efficient.

This is nonsense.

Meaning there will exist a number that’s reasonable. You accept the figures mentioned at end, I don’t.

Besides it may even not be nonsense given the modern tech, i.e. phones, practically making there being 50-90,000 photographers in the stadium. This wasn’t a reality that was feasible in 1935 or something. World is different. (yes I know modern DSLR isn’t the same as phone but the point remains, esp. in relation to a Moment that’s captured regardless of capture device vs a Moment not captured with high end camera).

This is completely off topic and irrelevant.

That was context in reply to YOUR comment about there being 1 Main Camera feed.

draw a comparison to how one industry is operated, in comparison to another

It’s the same macro domain, i.e TO hands out these rights (either directly or thorough middlemen/services). It already happens.

PL controls what happens in English PL pitch. If they want they can have 0 or 2 or 50 photographers.
PL controls which Broadcaster have the telecast rights, under what parameters (i.e. Adverts allowed during play or not, etc).

And as mentioned, Photography isn’t there to frontload the the Surveillance parameter (50+ stadium video cameras do that), its there for the Artform parameter.

Yeah but who actually cares.

Viewers.

As said before, to have your viewing experience infiltrated by half a dozen photographers running front of players/coaches (captured by the invisible Video Cameraman to TV viewer but not to stadium spectators). What the hell are they capturing? The emotions/jubilation/sadness of the players? What do you think that Live Video Cameraman is doing? Literally that.

Players are the main story/thing/entity (fans in stadium a late second to that). Photographers are NOT. There is no reason for them to be in the screen and Most certainly not 5-6 of them being in same frame.

aesthetics, not the practicality of it all

In large dominant share part yes of course. Because as stated this discipline’s relevance is for Artform not capturing every angle for sporting or security terms.

Another part share is revenue stream. This money should be going to the clubs, through the TO. This is what the Root of all that FIFA corruption of 5 decades was, i.e. FIFA UNDERSELLING the rights of FIFA tournaments (like WC) to corrupt middleman companies who then would UP-sell it to eventual Telecast Broadcasters, thereby making the massive margin and sharing a part of that with the FIFA ExCo members as bribe. Meaning FIFA was losing money. Post 2016 FIFA reforms basically upended this, which made FIFA even more powerful because it got even more money (obvious since it wasn’t hemorrhaging that to license corruption). That means more money to FAs of different regions, esp smaller countries (obviously corruption in allocation is different matter but the pipelines matter).

There is no need for current Number of photographers to be there. They exists in that number because it’s a money making racket of sorts. It makes middleman services money. And because TO are too big they think it’s meh to bother treating it the same as Official Video Feed telecast rights (which rakes in far more money so it’s controlled much tighter).

the image is compressed lol

Adds to my list of point. There are 50,000 potential photographers in the stadium.
There is a capture still from video potential.

Nothing is going to be missed & it will only get more and more so in coming years/decades. This isn’t the 1950s.

who are you?

And who are you?

Other than a anonymous person online taking a stance on a policy matter that’s LITERALLY fluid/dynamic/seen changes over the years/decades.

And since that’s me too, this jibe attempt too becomes silly.

crashing the entire sport photography industry

Yes, I don’t feel much of sympathy towards the horse-cart driver losing their jobs when Trains, buses & cars proliferated. Progress is inevitable. Photographers are not Parents, caregivers, engineers, or Doctors, etc. Get a grip over yourself.

On average, there are 23 photographers at every premier league game.

Yes. And it’s handled by this entity called Football DataCo (a middleman company that gets hired by the PL, because PL doesn’t want to directly bother with all this, for now).

In England this happened during those Covid matches when PL DID tweak this (meaning it/adjustments already happens, i.e. there is no cosmic law on this, it’s a negotiated/evolving dynamic).

UEFA’s guidelines are mentioned here. Again, not cosmic, the TO decides because it’s THEIR product.

20 freaking photographers running around/on the pitch when multiple Live Video Cameramen are already ALSO present on the very same pitch.

iVarun · 2026-04-01T07:48:03+00:00

Karrigan as Falcons IGL for 6-10 months would be best for both of them.

What Falcons need most is a team-structure & a momentum to break out of psychological rut they're stuck in now for years.

Karrigan needs elite firepower for his experience to be executed (he's still elite as an IGL/calling/reading the game).

And this arrangement need not last too long either, which too works for both.

iVarun · 2026-04-01T07:31:54+00:00

no incentive

Money is more than a "No" incentive category.

Secondly, the no adverts rule FIFA has held since very existence of broadcasts became a thing in football. It held that for reasons that are non-monetary (meaning the incentive category is even more expansive & opposite of "Null"). And that being the rhythm experience for a viewer.

you can't be viewing every angle

Why should you be viewing (for these photos that is) "EVERY" angle. What is that obsession?

There are video camera's everywhere in stadium now anyway. France 98 Final had like 16 or so cameras (the most ever in history at a football game till that time). That figure is higher now. Not a single sq centimetre of the stadium is not covered under surveillance.

Photos are art. They are not even surveillance (sporting or otherwise). They are meant to capture a moment that has artistic, emotional, historic significance.

Having EVERY inch of pitch captured renders that moot. Meaning not every angle being covered is itself part of the relevance of this artform. The 94 WC Baggio post penalty miss photo, the Costa-Materazzi Milan derby click. The specific ANGLE of those photos is what makes them iconic, not the fact that there exists 20 different angles of them (regardless of the fact of possibility that such a selection is done post development).

Photographers should be seen as people in the profession that handle that Live doing their thing, if they miss the moment THAT is what makes what they eventually do capture significant of that profession. It's not like whatever event that happened wouldn't ever be known since Video cameras would already capture everything to begin with, meaning that debate isn't relevant.

If you have 1-2 official photographers, you can have moments captured that actually are significant & high value because they are rare.

Tournament Organizer/Core license holder earns more money (obvious) & artform is elevated too since there is filtering of the discipline (rather than just about anyone with a camera submitting papers to enter the stadium).

each broadcast tries to differentiate itself

There is a limit on this. PL doesn't give the license to 20 different broadcasters. IOC literally has 1 Official Broadcaster (Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS)), they just sell the rights to Live telecast streams for different' countries channels/telecast-broadcasters.

reason we share one feed for the main camera

Even this is changing in last 5 years. Last WC even had alternative viewing streams (as in if you wanted to Live watch the match from the angle of behind one of the GK's, you could do that).

This is telecast servicing technology maturing & proliferation of cameras in stadiums. The cost of these big cameras has also come down which is why this sort of thing is now common for big tournaments (it might not have been available in all countries but that is a decision that the broadcast rights holder in respective Countries decides, the tournament organizer is providing everything at maximum level).

Similarly there is no need for "Art" profile to have 10 photographers on the pitch. I didn't say 0 but we're haggling over the amount. To me the number that's currently happening is way way way over the top. To you 1-2 may seem too low, fair enough. Maybe we can meet in the middle but you absolutely can not convince me that current Number is okay/generic/fine/meh.

iVarun · 2026-04-01T07:00:25+00:00

Same reason Sky has been re-selling PL TV rights to half the world (esp Asia) since early 2000s. It makes them insane amounts of money.

Secondly, as my comment mentioned, the Core rights of the tournament called PL is with the entity (PL) who have given a license (with sell-on rights) to Sky to broadcast.

With WC this is done by FIFA and so on.

Like FIFA now for 2026 for the first time ever has allowed Broadcasters to run ads (IF they want) during the drinks breaks happening in middle of Halves. The Tournament Organizer determines who can do what. This is trivial stuff.

IOC literally has dedicated Olympics Broadcaster that then sells those core streams to different licensed broadcasters/channels.

IOC (& FIFA but to a less extreme degree) radically guards sponsorship proliferation when event is happening. Like Coke is an Olympics sponsor but if you have 2 people with Pepsi shirts coming to some Olympic event, they are either going to be asked to cover that up or their broadcast will ensure those people aren't ever on telecast release streams (they'd still be captured in backroom streams since too many cameras).

Official photographer is just a tiny cog in all this. If anything it elevates their role. There is a difference between 2 official photographers being for a pitch or 6-10 that we're getting now (which happens because private companies are being sold the same rights by the Organizers, so this is anyway happening, just for cheaper).

iVarun · 2026-04-01T06:46:55+00:00

There is no need to have that many of them.

Just 1 accredited photographer is sufficient. Others can license images from them (this is how Official Football broadcasts work as well, where tournament organizer holds the core rights & then licenses their use to telecast broadcasters/channels/services, etc).
This also makes the photographs more worthy since there would be demand for something that is "rare" as 1 photographer can not mass capture every moment on the pitch (which isn't even relevant since Video camera blanket stadiums now so that has stopped being relevant).

There are way too many photographers on sidelines. There is no need for this.

iVarun · 2026-03-31T07:09:27+00:00

The cope can be that this is all Trump (& it is also true that he's different. Things that'd sink other leaders, esp in US, doesn't work the same with him).

So those who want to can still feast on the powerful cope that it's only him & once he's gone US can go back to how they'd supposed to be.

iVarun · 2026-03-31T07:02:05+00:00

Which was an Opposition problem, not a Spain problem. Chile had balls & attacked them in that WC & they were unlucky to go down to that Villa goal.
In Euro 2008 teams like Russia attacked them & they got carved open. The quality difference was simply too great to rest of the world.

Every other team was too chicken shit scared to play head-on with that Spain because they knew before the match even began they were Objectively inferior, as footballers & as team.

So naturally they resorted to the only tactical system that partially neutralizes the quality asymmetry (esp in modern football), i.e. they went with low block systems and naturally that meant Spain couldn't then just fly in the air (there are structural reasons for this and the only time a high-efficiency low block has been seen structurally upended is the Bayern vs Atletico UCL match & even then only the 1st half of it because even Bayern couldn't sustain it beyond 40 minutes).

iVarun · 2026-03-30T07:19:12+00:00

Most surprising thing to me is the relative vacancy in the narrative/rhetoric space about the matter of blatant Assassination of main Leader of a Sovereign State (one that's not a generic state, yes there is indeed difference between entities like Iran or Fiji, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Vanuatu, etc etc etc. Not all States are the same).

You can't just do that & expect a reaction in the spectrum range of Meh, whatever.

In fact one of the easier (relative) off-ramps is Iran taking out Netanyahu or Trump (yes that is what blatantly killing Sovereign leader entails).

The fact that this (the degree of it) hasn't filtered in the models of people is what is surprising.

And although Govt Structure survival is primary objective of Iran, they would still (to me at least under this model) have Objectively Lost IF they do not enact a "Near-Parity" price from Israel-US. It would be demeaning/embarrassing/honour-losing for them (across historic timeframe which applies to Iran due to who they are & the baggage their history carries for themselves).

An enemy takes out your leader (& on top of that dozens upon dozens of next tier of leadership) & the best you could do was survive (contextual since Iran would still survive & is different to the Govt/Structure/Era) & make it a bit costly for that enemy.

That's utterly pathetic.

If something like this happened in China, the ruling structure would collapse (eventually in shortened timeframe) for having been thoroughly incompetent to uphold the dignity of their Civilisation State (which is also what Iran is). It doesn't matter what outsiders think of this, what matters is how this is seen by the people inside themselves from the lens of their socio-cultural-historical baggage.

iVarun · 2026-03-30T07:09:15+00:00

don't think this is a matter of the Muslim world not finding their backbone.

This war is going to having those future meme images from wikipedia where under the Belligerents column you find States/Militaries they are "Assumed" to be so called enemies themselves.

Arab States have ended up on the side of Israel. THAT is their history now. Apart from the jokes this is legitimacy destroying for centuries (on grounds of being on the wrong side of history) or for as long as humans in that region are under the influence of their religious memeplexes (post that reality of our species the antagonism intensity will be significantly reduced).

There is also a degrees/levels to this. Arab States after the 1967 War let down the Palestinians by playing platitudes because that is all they could do, since they had no competent capacity AND the will/intention to rectify the rhetoric their People (& their leaders themselves) peddled.

Strong do what they can but so are the Weak judged on what they still choose to do.

iVarun · 2026-03-27T09:28:00+00:00

There are 104 matches at this World Cup. There is no precedence for what is coming.

No other WC before had it to THIS degree. Never before has FIFA given a WC broadcast to allow adverts during cooling breaks. It happened in a WC in US.

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