Why the BBC refused to broadcast the 2022 Qatar World Cup opening ceremony

The 2022 Qatar World Cup gave the globe a grand spectacle to open football’s most important tournament. However, the British Broadcasting Corporation completely ignored it. Why is that?

UK football fans switching to BBC One expecting to see the opening ceremony had to watch instead the event on an online-only stream, The Guardian reports.

The 2022 Qatar World Cup opening ceremony, which took place in Al Bayt Stadium, was hosted by Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman.

Among other things, it included a performance of the song ‘Dreamer’ by Jungkook, from the Korean K-pop group BTS.

BBC One, instead, chose to broadcast the last 20 minutes of the Women’s Super League match between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur.

Afterward, viewers were welcomed by Gary Lineker presenting a special broadcast highlighting some of Qatar 2022’s biggest controversies.

Image: BBC One

“It’s the most controversial World Cup in history and a ball hasn’t even been kicked,” said the Match of the Day host, as quoted by The Guardian.

Lineker went on to highlight accusations of corruption in the bidding process and the use of migrant workers in slave-like conditions to build the enormous stadiums that will be home to the Qatar 2022 World Cup.

The Leicester-born former footballer also commented about Qatar’s human rights situation: Homosexual is illegal in the small Arabic country and women’s rights and freedom of expression is limited.

For half hour, the special included former footballers Alex Scott and Alan Shearer addressing some issues surrounding the Qatar 2022 World Cup with statements from Amnesty International.

“You will never know what it is like to be a migrant worker. To keep saying football is for everyone – it’s not. You can’t say football is for everyone,” Scott said, as a reference to previous statements by FIFA chief Gianni Infantino.

The special was then followed by the opening match between Ecuador and Qatar, where the South American team won 2-0 against the event’s host.

The Daily Mail collected fan complaints from social media. Many argued how the BBC kept the monopoly on broadcasting rights on the tournament while restricting its viewership.

British pundit Piers Morgan was quoted by The Daily Mirror decrying that the gesture was “outrageously disrespectful to Qatar.”

Al Jazeera, meanwhile, points out how the BBC had no problem broadcasting the Russia 2018 World Cup, despite the country’s spotty human rights record and annexation of Crimea.

However, some applauded the gesture by the BBC as brave. The Guardian defined it as “a television broadcaster with the rights to show the world’s biggest sporting event choosing to comprehensively trash the product it was about to serve up.”