Gone are the days when the World Cup was watched for free. Mohamed El-Sayed rounds up a week of football that costs Perhaps no football fan in Egypt thought that one day he or she would have to pay to watch the football World Cup. Since the championship was first aired live in Egypt in 1978, Egyptians have been glued to their TV screens every four years as they take a break from their mundane, often difficult daily life. But starting from this World Cup in Germany, the Egyptian public wanting to watch the World Cup are being asked to pay not less than LE1,500 to watch the games on the only Arab TV network that bought the rights to broadcast the event in Africa and the Middle East. Or they can watch on a few European satellite channels, or on street cafés. Public free TV is not an option. Someone's pain is another's gain. The press took the opportunity to pull the rug from under Egyptian TV, giving special coverage to the event. Photos of the games, cheerful fans and a colourful ambiance were scattered throughout the pages of all papers and magazines. Al-Ahram, among many other papers, published the timetable of matches and the European satellite channels on which football fans can watch the games. News of the matches and behind the scenes reports made it on the front pages of almost all newspapers. A large chunk of football fans, mostly students, found themselves between a rock and a hard place, for the event coincides with final secondary school exams. "Definitely the World Cup will have a negative effect on the final results of secondary school this year," wrote Ahmed Hassan in Nahdet Misr . "It goes without saying that, unlike any other year, the number of those who will get high marks will hit bottom lows," Hassan continued. The writer made fun of the current local football cup matches, arguing that fans in Egypt "will be disillusioned. They will realise that the matches they are watching here is a fiasco. "Poor is the Egyptian people... they even have to pay to watch football matches," Hassan wrote. Sheikh Saleh Kamel, chairman of ART, the only TV network that has exclusive rights to broadcast the World Cup, published a full-page ad in the daily Al-Ahram, boasting of the two million subscribers of his channels during the World Cup. He warned all those who have illegal access to these channels of being sued. Kamel brought some good news for football fans: his channel would broadcast the opening ceremony and match, the two semi- finals and final free of charge. The daily independent Al-Masry Al-Yom quoted Abdel-Fattah Hassan, head of the state-owned Nile Sports channel as saying: "I call upon human rights organisations to ask the UN to make watching the World Cup matches free for all people around the world as one of the basic human rights. "The UN should stand up to FIFA which granted exclusive broadcasting rights to certain companies to air the matches." The paper also reported that Egyptian TV officials received a strongly worded message from ART against airing any live or recorded part of the matches on terrestrial or satellite channels. Al-Ahram highlighted on its front page the scathing criticism the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi launched against FIFA. "FIFA made many of those who are obsessed with football suffer from psychological and neurotic illnesses," Gaddafi said. "If Julet Rimet was with us these days, he would have cancelled the World Cup tournament for it promotes hatred among nations," he added. Gaddafi also demanded that the World Cup be organised by several countries at the same time to spread the benefits of its organisation to as many countries as possible. Abdel-Mohsen Salama of Al-Ahram looked at the World Cup from another perspective. "All people's attention is now directed at the matches while turning a blind eye to the massacres being committed in Palestine and Iraq. It seems that we forgot about all our problems when the matches began. There is no unemployment problems as those who can't find jobs are busy watching the games at cafés. People forgot the sky high prices, the chronic problems of private lessons, traffic jams, housing... etc."
