Karmic Payback? Saudi Football Fans May Miss Their Team's World Cup Opening Match

One Way the Blockade Effects 

People and not Just Governments

I am writing several book chapters for an upcoming book on the blockade of Qatar. In one chapter I described attacks on the media by the countries starting the blockade – Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Bahrain, and Egypt. Among other things, the countries blocked Al Jazeera broadcasts and other media originating from Qatar.

I stated that the media blockade serve at least two purposes. It keeps an opposing narrative about Qatar from reaching people in the blockading countries. It also limits access to programming popular with conservative Muslim audiences.

In that chapter, I also described the Saudis relationship with sport broadcaster beIn Sports:

Saudi Arabia also blocked access to the ubiquitous and highly popular, Qatar-financed, beIN Sports on June 13, 2018. The station has about 5,000 staffers working in 43 countries. The U.A.E blocked access for six weeks before restoring it on July 22, 2018. Police had ejected and questioned beIN reporters attending sports events in the blockading countries or required them to remove company logos from equipment. The blockading countries would not allow marketing of the company or the sale of subscriptions, and they have encouraged their athletes to boycott any interviews with beIN. Countries sympathetic to the siege have prevented beIN staff from entering their countries to cover events. A pirate station also began working in Saudi Arabia. Then in January 2018, Egypt’s top prosecutor indicted beIN’s CEO, Nassar Al-Khelaifi, on charges of monopolistic practices.

See Paula Marie Young, "Power-Based Interventions of Countries Organizing the Siege Against Qatar," Qatar: Political, Economic, and Social Issues (Nova Science Pubs. expected 2019).

In what some people would characterized as Karmic payback, the Gulf Times reported on June 9, 2018 that negotiations between beIN and Saudi Arabia have broken down. beIN owns the rights to broadcast all 64 games of the World Cup. The £25 million sub-licensing deal would allow the broadcast in Saudi Arabia of the opening and closing match plus 20 other games of the World Cup.

The 21st World Cup begins on June 14, 2018 in Russia. If the negotiation fails, Saudi fans will have to watch the games through pirated broadcasts at locations with that broadcast capability. They will not be able to watch, from the comfort of their homes, their own team play in the opening match with Russia.

beIN has reached a sub-licensing deal with the U.A.E.

The Saudis have now asked FIFA to negotiate the deal on their behalf.  Its football federation later filed a complaint with FIFA. For more on this aspect of the story see here and here.

Saudi Arabia said it would broadcast the matches illegally, which triggered a response from FIFA and beIn Sports.

FIFA later imposed a hefty fine on Egypt's football team because Egyptian players refused to give beIn interviews.

Clearly, the blockading countries did not anticipate that the blockade would extend into this important football tournament. They erroneously expected Qatar to capitulate quickly to the demands of the blockading countries. Instead, Qatar creatively responded to the siege. See Paula Marie Young, "The Siege of Qatar: Creating a BATNA that Strengthened the Tiny Country’s Negotiating Power," Qatar: Political, Economic, and Social Issues (Nova Science Pubs. expected 2019).

Update: On June 13, 2018, Qatari officials announced that they had created three fan zones in different terminals of Qatar's international airport that would allow travelers to watch World Cup matches in their entirety.

Very Modest Increase in Women Who Hold Equity Partnerships in Law Firms

Still Working on that Glass Ceiling

When I made partner in the mid-1990s, only sixteen percent of all partners in the U.S. were women.

A NAWL 2014 report shows little progress since then:

In its eighth year, the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL®) and The NAWL Foundation’s® annual Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms reveals not much has changed in its findings of compensation, leadership roles, rainmaking, and equity partnership at the nation’s largest 200 firms. The data this year revealed the same trend as in previous years: the greatest percentage of women (64 percent) occupy the lowest positions in firms (staff attorneys) and the highest positions in firms (equity partners) are occupied by the lowest percentage of women (17 percent). In comparison, the 2012 survey reported 15 percent equity partners were women and 70 percent staff attorneys were women.

“This year’s results reinforce that women in private practice continue to face barriers to reaching the highest positions in their firms – as equity partners and members of governance committees,” said Stephanie Scharf, report author, Past President of The NAWL Foundation, and Partner at Scharf Banks Marmor LLC. “It is troubling that women make up the large majority of staff attorneys – those lawyers in the lowest echelon of law firms – at the same time they make up a static minority (on average 17%) of equity partners in BigLaw.”

The 2017 report shows ongoing stagnation.

White women represent 88 percent of women equity partners and nearly 17 percent of equity partners overall. In the aggregate, women of color (including Black, Asian, Latina women) represent only 12 percent of women equity partners and about 2 percent of all equity partners . . . . There were some noticeable differences between the AmLaw Quartiles for representations of various diverse groups among equity partners. Women were 17 – 19 percent of all equity partners across the AmLaw 200. 

The new report has a table that makes a powerful statement about this lag in gender equality.