Copyright body seeks clarity on World Cup licence

The Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Copy­right Col­lec­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTC­CO), As­ten Isaac, is call­ing for greater trans­paren­cy over the li­cens­ing of FI­FA World Cup broad­casts in com­mer­cial es­tab­lish­ments, say­ing the de­bate should be guid­ed by con­trac­tu­al rights and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law rather than spec­u­la­tion.

In a state­ment, Isaac said pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion in­di­cates that Caribbean Pre­mier Sports Ltd. (CP­SL), op­er­a­tor of the RUSH Sports Net­work, holds the ex­clu­sive Caribbean me­dia rights for the 2026 FI­FA World Cup through an agree­ment with IRIS Sport Me­dia.

Ac­cord­ing to Isaac, RUSH Sports has al­so en­tered in­to dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ments with tele­vi­sion providers, in­clud­ing Dig­i­cel and oth­er re­gion­al op­er­a­tors, mak­ing its chan­nels avail­able to sub­scribers across the Caribbean.

He point­ed to FI­FA's Pub­lic View­ing Reg­u­la­tions, which dis­tin­guish be­tween com­mer­cial and non com­mer­cial pub­lic view­ing events and re­quire li­cences for com­mer­cial pub­lic screen­ings where ap­plic­a­ble.

Isaac said the reg­u­la­tions de­fine com­mer­cial pub­lic view­ing as events where busi­ness­es ob­tain a com­mer­cial ben­e­fit, whether through ad­mis­sion fees, spon­sor­ship, pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties or oth­er com­mer­cial ad­van­tages. He not­ed that bars, restau­rants, clubs, cin­e­mas and sim­i­lar venues are specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied with­in the reg­u­la­tions.

Isaac said that if RUSH Sports has ap­point­ed the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COTT) as its li­cens­ing and col­lec­tion agent for com­mer­cial pub­lic view­ing rights, then COTT would sim­ply be ad­min­is­ter­ing those rights on be­half of the rights hold­er.

How­ev­er, he ar­gued that the cen­tral is­sue is whether RUSH Sports re­tained the com­mer­cial pub­lic view­ing rights or trans­ferred them to tele­vi­sion providers as part of com­mer­cial sub­scrip­tion pack­ages.

Isaac said he has not seen any pub­licly avail­able com­mer­cial sub­scriber agree­ments from providers such as Flow, Dig­i­cel, Am­plia or Air­Link con­firm­ing whether com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion sub­scrip­tions in­clude or ex­clude the right to pub­licly screen World Cup match­es in busi­ness es­tab­lish­ments.

He said that dis­tinc­tion is crit­i­cal. If the rights re­main with RUSH Sports, then a sep­a­rate com­mer­cial li­cence could be legal­ly jus­ti­fied. How­ev­er, if the rights were al­ready grant­ed to tele­vi­sion providers and in­clud­ed in com­mer­cial sub­scrip­tions, busi­ness­es could le­git­i­mate­ly ques­tion whether they are be­ing asked to pay twice for the same rights.

Isaac said on­ly the rel­e­vant con­trac­tu­al doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing agency agree­ments, me­dia rights con­tracts, com­mer­cial sub­scrip­tion agree­ments and li­cens­ing no­tices, can re­solve the is­sue.

He main­tained that copy­right li­cens­ing should al­ways be trans­par­ent, legal­ly jus­ti­fied and eas­i­ly un­der­stood, en­sur­ing both rights hold­ers and com­mer­cial users are treat­ed fair­ly un­der the law.