Olya Morvan for The New York Times
A toxic political dispute is threatening to sink the Persian Gulf’s biggest sports television contract, a development that could have repercussions for other broadcast rights agreements worth billions of dollars.
The Asian Football Confederation, the governing body for soccer in the region, on Tuesday unilaterally broke its exclusive contract with its Middle Eastern broadcast partner, the Qatar-based beIN Media Group, so that it could broadcast matches in Saudi Arabia, a country where beIN has been banned amid a bitter diplomatic and economic crisis between Gulf neighbors that is now in its second year.