Israelis cry foul over World Cup viewing

By Ofira Koopmans May 31, 2006, 15:13 GMT

Tel Aviv - The right to watch the World Cup has become the focus of petitions to the supreme court, a consumer boycott and a bidding war among television companies in Israel.

One week before the world's biggest football event, only a meagre 1,700 Israelis had signed up with their satellite and cable providers for the World Cup package.

The reason is that the vast majority refused to pay almost 90 euros - the price of an (expensive) plane ticket to Europe - for the privilege to watch the games.

Only on Wednesday, a day after Israel's two leading satellite providers Yes and Hot were forced to back down and lower their prices - did Israelis who had been waiting until the last minute begin signing up.

Now down to 55 euros, Israelis are still paying more, however, than most football supporters around the globe, with most World Cup matches being shown for free on public channels in a vast majority of countries, or in some on cable without extra charge to the normal monthly fees.

'It's a scandal,' says Boaz Mosayev, a diehard football fan who supports Maccabi Tel Aviv and also follows all major European leagues, including the Italian, British and Spanish ones.

'I tell you, not only are we one of the few countries where we still have to pay a television license fee, the cables here are also one of the most expensive in the world and in the end, when there is the World Cup, we have to pay again,' he says angrily.

He refers to the fact that Israelis already pay on average more than 40 euros a month for their cable or satellite subscriptions, or 500 euros a year.

'It's ridiculous,' says also Shai, a 33-year-old football supporter from Tel Aviv, who wanted the Liverpool supporters song 'You'll never walk alone' played at his wedding as he and his wife exchanged their vows, and for whom watching every single World Cup game is a must. 'Football is becoming a sport for the rich instead of for the people,' he adds.

Such is the outrage in Israel, that people have even been sending around petitions by email, calling on football supporters not to purchase the World Cup television packages and watch the matches in local pubs instead - normally not a widespread habit in a country where pub attendance and beer consumption is conspicuously low compared to - say - Ireland, Britain, Germany or Holland.

'Don't be suckers!' urged one email petition, tapping in to a deep-rooted phobia in Israeli society of being thought 'an easy mark'.

It also called on Israeli sports fans to volunteer for reserve duty, since Russian-immigrant billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak, who among others owns the Beitar Jeruslem football club, spent 2 million dollars buying the World Cup package as a gift for all army bases around the country.

A cartoon titled 'Free World Cup broadcasts in the Palestinian Authority', printed in the leading Ha'aretz broadsheet this week, also showed four Israelis climbing over Israel's West Bank security wall, with one of them telling a surprised Palestinian riding a donkey on the other side: 'We are all one family.'

The issue of charging a special fee for the World Cup games has even made it to the supreme court, but its judges on Tuesday rejected one petition which called the charges 'unreasonable' and on Wednesday rejected another which charged that it was illegal for the satellite providers to block European channels which were broadcasting the games for free.

But Football fan Mosayev says that, in the end, he will pay:

'I won't give up the World Cup because it is something that happens only once very four years and it is the love of our lives.'