Team Insights

The Legal Boundaries of Text-and-Image Live Coverage of the World Cup

Rongchao IP Team · 2026-06-04

Introduction

With the rapid evolution of digital media technology and profound structural changes in audience content consumption habits, the traditional live broadcast of complete sports events, mainly on large TV screens, is no longer the only channel for audiences to obtain event information. "Live-Ticker / Text and Image Live Broadcasting" (Live-Ticker/Text and Image Live Broadcasting), which uses high-frequency text updates as its skeleton and supplements real-time event screenshots and short video clips (i.e. GIF animations) as its core features, is rapidly emerging and has become the core business model for major digital media, portals and social platforms around the world to attract traffic and enhance user stickiness1. This highly fragmented, highly interactive and real-time content distribution model meets the audience’s immediate consumption needs on the mobile terminal, but at the same time it creates a fierce and irreconcilable conflict with the strict intellectual property (IP) protection system and exclusive broadcast rights business logic established by top sports event organizations such as FIFA (FIFA) 3.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup (FIFA World Cup 2026™) will be the largest event in the history of the world's top sport. The tournament has unprecedentedly expanded to 48 teams, covering a total of 104 fierce games, and competed in 16 host cities in the three host countries of the United States, Canada and Mexico 4. Such a huge scale of competition has created unprecedented financial needs. In order to maintain the operation of the event, FIFA's business empire is highly dependent on selling exclusive media rights to major official broadcasters around the world (such as FOX Network, NBCUniversal in the United States, Bell Media in Canada, and rights-holding broadcasters in various regions) at high prices. 4. In this macro-industry context, whether third-party digital platforms or self-media without official authorisation violating the law by conducting "graphic live broadcasts" of the World Cup is no longer a single infringement determination issue. It profoundly touches on a series of extremely complex jurisprudence disputes such as the characterization of legal objects in sports event scenes, the boundaries between written reporting and press freedom, the applicability of the copyright fair use (Fair Use) system in the digital age, and the boundaries of anti-unfair competition law. 9

This report aims to conduct an exhaustive and systematic study on the legality and potential infringement risks of the World Cup graphic live broadcast through extremely detailed details and in-depth legal analysis, from the original source of rights of the event, the core components of the graphic live broadcast (text, pictures, animations), the comparative law practice in core global jurisdictions (China, Germany, the EU and the United States), and in-depth commercial marketing rules.

1. FIFA’s exclusive rights system and commercial authorisation logic

To discuss the legality of graphic and text live broadcasts, we must first clarify the source, subject and exclusive boundaries of sports event broadcasting rights from a legal perspective. FIFA has established its absolute control over the World Cup through its extremely detailed tournament charter, internal rules and regulations, and international intellectual property strategy, and has built a tight defensive fortress in both physical and digital dimensions. 3

1\. Separation of the original rights ownership of the event and the media broadcast rights

According to international sports jurisprudence and FIFA's official charter statement, FIFA, as the highest governing body of international football, is the original and sole owner of all rights generated by various events and activities under its jurisdiction. In the "FIFA World Cup 26™ Intellectual Property Guide", FIFA clearly declares that it holds all rights related to the 2026 World Cup. These rights not only cover copyright and trademark rights in a narrow sense, but more broadly include all intellectual property rights, media broadcasts, commercial marketing, franchising, ticketing and all other derivative commercial rights 4. Since FIFA itself does not directly broadcast events to global audiences, its core business model is to finely segment media rights (Media Rights) by region, communication technology and platform carriers, and issue exclusive licenses to official broadcast agencies 8.

For example, for the 2026 World Cup, FIFA has already signed broadcast agreements with organizations such as FOX Network (covering English streams) and NBCUniversal (covering Spanish streams) in the United States, and is promoting this exclusive licensing model globally 8 . At the same time, in the face of the impact of digital streaming media, FIFA is also actively adjusting its media rights matrix, such as signing an agreement with TikTok in specific areas to make it the "preferred platform", allowing official broadcast agencies to stream game content on such dedicated hubs, and even reaching cooperation with YouTube and Brazil's CazéTV to provide free live broadcasts of the entire game or the first 10 minutes 8. The official broadcasting agency that has obtained such exclusive authorisation not only obtains traditional television broadcasting rights, but also obtains exclusive information network dissemination rights including Internet live broadcast, delayed broadcast, on-demand broadcast and production of game highlights 14. This means that any live broadcast behaviour by unauthorised third-party platforms that may divert traffic from official broadcasters, reduce their advertising revenue, or weaken their subscription appeal will be within the scope of strict legal monitoring and crackdown.

2\. Control of physical space and extension of “Hausrecht”

In addition to confirming rights within the framework of intellectual property laws, FIFA and the organizing committees of each competition area also strengthen their exclusivity through absolute control of the physical competition venues. Any media personnel who enter the venue to report, volunteers who provide services, or even ordinary spectators who purchase tickets are subject to strict contracts, including legal documents such as the "Media Accreditation Terms and Conditions" and the "Volunteer Code of Conduct" 15. In German legal theory, this kind of control right based on the ownership or use rights of a physical place is called "Hausrecht"18.

According to media accreditation rules, even registered journalists who have obtained official interview credentials are subject to extremely strict restrictions on their behaviour in the venue (including but not limited to shooting areas, transmission media, and release times)16. If on-site personnel violate these pre-existing contract terms and use mobile devices to conduct unauthorised graphic live broadcasts, score releases, or video signal transmissions in the venue, this not only constitutes a potential infringement of relevant intellectual property rights, but also a direct breach of contract and an infringement of the "right to home." The event organizing committee has the right to immediately and unilaterally cancel its media certification qualifications, confiscate relevant equipment and forcibly expel them from the venue, thereby cutting off the physical signal source of illegal graphic live broadcasts at the source 16.

2. Legal characterization of “pure text reporting” in graphic live broadcasts: the game between the principle of non-protection of facts and data monopoly

As a multi-modal, hypertextual (Hypertextual) modern digital media form, "graphic live broadcast" is the most basic and original skeleton of a pure text data stream that is updated in real time1. The core content of a typical text live broadcast usually includes: game timeline, score updates, objective description of the game situation (such as "In the 15th minute, Argentina won a corner kick"), text analysis of technical and tactical techniques, and interactive audience comments interspersed 1. Determining whether this part of the text is infringing involves the core basic principles of intellectual property law.

1\. Non-copyrightness of objective facts of sports events

In the internationally recognized copyright jurisprudence and the judicial practice of many countries such as China, the United States and Europe, there is a basic consensus that objectively existing facts themselves are not protected by copyright law (this is called the "dichotomy of ideas and expressions" principle). The progress of a football match, the specific score results, players’ red and yellow cards, etc., are all “objective facts in the public domain” 2 . Therefore, third-party media or individuals who only use plain text (Text-only) to describe, record, and publicly transmit in real time the facts of an event that occurred objectively, no matter how fast the transmission speed is, usually does not constitute an infringement of the copyright of the event organizer or official broadcast agency. 2

The German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has repeatedly established this principle in a number of landmark cases involving sports data and "Live-Ticker" (live text broadcast). The German judiciary generally believes that providing text-only live scores and objective text live broadcasts falls within the scope of freedom of speech and freedom of news reporting protected by the Constitution1. Digital media platforms deliver real-time game results in the form of text, which is essentially the legitimate use of public information and aims to satisfy the public's right to know about major news events26. Therefore, if an Internet platform hires a dedicated person to watch legal television broadcasts or obtain information through legal means at the scene, and then writes real-time text about the game in his or her own language style, this mode of operation is allowed under the framework of copyright law.

2\. Derivative risks of text-only live broadcasts: database protection and anti-unfair competition law

However, just because text-only live broadcasts do not infringe copyright does not mean that they are in a complete legal vacuum. When the data acquisition method, commercial utilization scale and conflict with official interests of text live broadcasts reach certain thresholds, they will face strict regulations from other departmental laws:

Conflict between automatic data capture and the European Union's Database Directive: In today's highly commercialized world, many large-scale graphic and text live broadcast platforms often no longer rely on manual writing in order to reduce labour costs and improve the speed of data delays. Instead, they use technical means such as web crawlers to capture real-time data backends maintained by event officials or officially authorised sports data providers (such as Sportradar and other institutions) in real time 27. The jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the courts of member states such as the United Kingdom shows that these databases that compile massive real-time advanced data on competitions are protected by the EU's "Sui Generis Database Right" if their creation and maintenance cost the rights holders a large amount of manpower, material and financial investment. 19 If a third-party graphic live broadcast platform continues to extract and reuse these event data in substantial quantity or quality for its own commercial Live-Ticker products without authorization, it will constitute a direct infringement of database rights 28.
Free-rider review under the Unfair Competition Law: Even if database infringement is avoided, text-only live broadcasts may hit the red line of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law if they operate in a very aggressive manner. If a text live broadcast platform is deeply tied to illegal gambling companies (for example, dynamic odds links are frequently embedded on text live broadcast pages), or its operating model is designed to serve as a direct, low-cost substitute and systematically "free ride" to seek commercial interests that originally belong to the official live broadcast platform, it may be deemed to have violated the principle of good faith. However, in German judicial practice, judges are extremely cautious in applying this safety clause. Courts generally hold that given that sports events themselves are deliberately excluded from the absolute protection of intellectual property rights by legislators, unless the plaintiff can prove that the third party’s pure text updates constitute a direct and malicious “misappropriation” of the economic investment of the official event organizer, and may cause the official event to be unable to maintain its existence, otherwise based on the principle of free market competition, simple high-frequency text updates are not enough to constitute unfair competition 10.

*Table 1: Legal Risk Research and Judgment Matrix for Different Types of Text Live Broadcasting*

Text live broadcast behaviour pattern	Operation details and information sources	Applicable core legal departments	Potential legal risk level assessment
Hand-written text only	Reporters independently write text based on legal television footage or on-site observation for real-time commentary	Copyright law (principles of thought and expression); Constitution (freedom of news reporting)	Extremely low. Facts are not protected, and independent written expressions have independent intellectual property rights. 1
Large-scale technology to capture real-time data	Use crawler technology to capture real-time API data from official data providers such as Sportradar at high frequency	Special rights protection under the EU's "Database Directive"; Anti-unfair competition law	High. Infringe on special database rights and unfairly seize other people's significant investment results. 19
Commercial text live broadcast bundled with gambling	Text live broadcast page bundled with underground sports betting handicap and real-time odds deep link	Gambling control regulations of various countries; Anti-unfair competition law (unfair profit-seeking)	Extremely high. It may be suspected of diverting traffic from illegal gambling and seriously disrupting business order. 26

3. The copyright dilemma and judicial qualitative evolution of "image interception (screenshots and animations)" in graphic live broadcasts

Although pure text has the advantage of being exempt from copyright liability, due to its lack of strong visual impact and emotional resonance, it has long been unable to meet the sensory needs of contemporary Internet audiences for the climax of the game (such as goal moments and red card disputes). Therefore, most of the so-called "graphic live broadcasts" of the World Cup on the current market are actually a mixture of text streams and a large number of nested high-definition screenshots of official live broadcasts of the event, and even high frame rate GIF animations and short video clips. 1. It is the abuse of this "image and dynamic video clip" that forms the absolute core of the current controversy over the legality of graphic live broadcasts, and has a high probability of touching the red line of the legal systems of many countries.

1\. Debate over the object quality of public signal images of sports events: video products or audiovisual works?

To determine whether screenshots and animations constitute infringement, we must first solve a world-class difficult pre-legal question: What level of legal object does the official, continuous public signal screen for World Cup broadcasts belong to? This issue directly determines the strength of protection, and has triggered profound theoretical differences and judicial swings in China and the international judicial community for several years.

Path 1: The long-prevailing "video production" theory (denying originality)

For a long period of time, judicial institutions, including some local courts in China, tended to believe that the filming process of large-scale sports events was subject to extremely strict objective rules. Due to the fixed size of the football field and the unified rules of the game, and in order to meet the needs of global audiences for clear viewing, modern sports broadcasts adopt highly standardized production manuals. This results in different broadcasters using highly similar camera settings, camera panning, and other shooting techniques when filming the same event. 9 Scholars and judges who support this approach believe that this kind of filming is only a "mechanical record" of the objective process of the event, and the personal freedom of creation of the director and cameraman is extremely compressed, so it cannot meet the high standard of "originality" required by copyright law. 9 If the event footage is only recognized as a "video product", then the rights holder (broadcaster) can only enjoy lower-level neighboring rights (video product producer's rights). Before the third in-depth revision of China's Copyright Law in 2020, the scope of legal rights of video producers was relatively narrow, especially the coverage of information network dissemination rights. As a result, official broadcasting agencies were faced with the endless "live broadcast of graphics, text, animations" and "fragmented distribution" in the Internet environment, and fell into a great passivity and dilemma in safeguarding their rights. 9

Path 2: Comprehensively establish the theory of "audiovisual works/film works" (recognizing originality)

With the exponential surge in industrial value and the deepening of legal understanding, judicial practice has undergone a fundamental shift. Taking the evolution of China's judicial system as an example, in the landmark "Sina.com v. Phoenix.com Chinese Super League live broadcast graphic and text infringement case" (known by the industry as the first case of copyright in broadcasting of sports events in China), this dispute received a final answer with case law significance 14. In this case, the plaintiff Sina spent huge sums of money to obtain the exclusive online broadcast rights for Chinese Super League matches, while the defendant Phoenix.com conducted a "graphic live broadcast" of the matches on the Chinese Super League channel on its website, and embedded a large number of dynamic screenshots and short videos of the match scenes between the text 14 . The case went through the first instance (which was determined to constitute a work), the second instance (which overturned the first instance and held that the live broadcast images were not stably fixed on a tangible carrier and did not constitute a film-like work), and finally appealed to the Beijing Higher People's Court for retrial (it was dropped in 2020). In the retrial judgment, the Beijing High Court made a revision of far-reaching historical significance. It profoundly pointed out: The high-level live public signal pictures of large-scale sports events such as the World Cup and the Chinese Super League are by no means mechanical and objective records in terms of the overall selection of numerous camera positions, instantaneous switching of multi-angle lenses, slow-motion playback arrangement of key pictures, and keen capture of close-ups of players' facial expressions. Instead, they fully and deeply reflect the high degree of intellectual investment, personalized selection and creative arrangement of the event director and his entire creative team. This kind of complex team collaboration and real-time artistic processing fully meets the "originality" required by copyright law, and therefore should be clearly recognized as a "film-like work" subject to the highest level of protection (uniformly referred to as "audiovisual works" according to China's latest revised Copyright Law) 14. In response to the second-instance court's view that the live event signal was "not stably fixed on a tangible carrier" at the time of transmission, denying the nature of the work, the Beijing High Court resolutely corrected it in the retrial and determined that the instantaneous caching and memory fixation of the live signal on the server side in modern digital communication technology are sufficient to meet the "fixability" requirements of the work in traditional copyright law. 14

Coincidentally, the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) and related lower appeals courts (such as the LG Hamburg District Court in its ruling on the 2018 World Cup copyright dispute) also made completely consistent legal judgments. The German court clearly ruled that the basic public signal (Basic Feed) for the men's and women's football World Cup broadcasts is a "cinematographic work" (the specific legal basis is Article 2 Paragraph 1 Paragraph 6 of the German Copyright Act UrhG) and is subject to complete and unreserved copyright protection. The court emphasized that the broadcast director’s careful selection of multiple camera angles, the dramatic combination of continuous image sequences, and the interspersed use of normal playback speed and shocking slow-motion replays (Slow-motion replays) constituted an irrefutable and huge creative artistic investment, thus firmly establishing the status of his work. 34

2\. Judicial infringement determination situation of moving pictures (GIF) and screenshots

Once the highest object characterization of sports event broadcasts (i.e., "audiovisual works") is firmly established at the highest judicial level in various countries, the act of taking screenshots, making GIF animations, and cutting short videos into strips without official authorisation and using them for graphic live broadcasts will without any suspense directly fall within the absolute control of the rights holder's "Right of Information Network Dissemination" or "broadcasting rights" 35 .

In recent years, Chinese courts have successively struck out against the infringement of live broadcasts of animated images during top-tier events such as the World Cup, making many blockbuster judgments with huge amounts. For example:

CCTV International Network v. Shanghai Juli (PPTV): During the fierce battle of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Shanghai Juli Company intercepted and produced as many as 843 GIF animations of key World Cup events without any permission, and used them with text to publish high-frequency graphic and text event information on its website 36. In the final hearing, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court clearly determined that the systematic production and distribution of animations constituted a serious infringement of the plaintiff CCTV Network’s core information network dissemination rights for the events involved, and ruled that the defendant should bear a huge compensation liability of up to 4 million yuan 36.
CCTV International Network v. Jiji App: Also regarding the 2018 World Cup in Russia, CCTV sued the operator of the popular social application "Jiji App" at the time to the Beijing Haidian District People's Court, accusing Jiji App of providing the public with an on-demand GIF service of World Cup game scenes without authorisation (that is, the platform allowed users to upload and exchange a large number of game highlight GIFs within their core football circles)37. CCTV not only claimed copyright infringement, but also pointed out that Ji App’s move had severely damaged the normal commercial market order established by spending hundreds of millions of yuan to purchase World Cup broadcast rights. It demanded compensation of 5 million yuan and claimed that it constituted unfair competition 37. These extremely deterrent judicial precedents have sent an extremely strong and clear signal to the entire digital media industry: the so-called "graphic live broadcast" that attempts to use GIF animations or ultra-short video clips is essentially the illegal cutting and distribution of core value clips of film and television works, and carries a very high and certain risk of infringement.

3\. The failure logic of the “Fair Use/Fair Dealing” defence mechanism

Faced with overwhelming accusations of infringement, the most common defence strategy used by many third-party graphic live streaming platforms in court is to invoke the "fair use" system (Exceptions and Limitations) commonly found in copyright laws in various countries to defend their interceptions of event footage. This includes Article 24 of China’s Copyright Law, which stipulates that “for the purpose of reporting current affairs, it is inevitable to cite published works in works”35; the broad provisions on “Transformative Use” in Article 107 of the US Copyright Law32; and the extremely sophisticated “image citation” (Bildzitat) clause in Article 51 (§ 51 UrhG) of Germany’s Copyright Law40.

However, in-depth legal analysis and a large number of legal cases show that in the context of a World Cup-scale commercial live broadcast of graphics and text, this defence is almost completely invalid. Its core logic lies in the irreconcilability of the following two dimensions: First, the deviation of the essential purpose of the quote and the serious lack of transformation. Take "image citation" (Bildzitat) under German law as an example. The German Supreme Court has set extremely strict thresholds for quoting other people's images, requiring that the quoted image fragments must substantially serve the citation's own independently created academic, scientific research or in-depth commentary text argument, and the image only serves as an indispensable auxiliary interpretation tool (that is, it must form an internal dialogue logic) 40. If an image is posted on social media solely for purely visual appeal (such as displaying a beautiful wallpaper or interface design), this does not constitute a citation42. In the vast majority of commercial graphic live broadcasts, the purpose of editing GIFs and screenshots is purely to show the audience "the shocking moment of Messi's winning goal" or "the key action of the referee's penalty kick". Its essence is still a direct and original reproduction of the core viewing experience and entertainment value of the original event video. It completely fails to give the original work any new meaning, expression or information, and is extremely lacking in substantive "Transformative" (Transformative) in terms of aesthetics or legal principles32. Second, disastrous substitution effects on the official potential commercial market**. The vitality of graphic live broadcast lies in its ultimate "real-time" (Live). The huge commercial value of the World Cup copyright is essentially based on this rare "real-time suspense announcement". Just imagine, if hundreds of millions of viewers can watch all the wonderful goals, red card controversies and cup-winning moments in all 104 games through the apps or web pages of third-party media platforms for free, without delay and extremely conveniently through high-definition continuous GIF animations, then their rigid willingness to pay for subscriptions to official rights-holding broadcasting agencies (such as Germany's DAZN, Sky, China's CCTV, Migu and other online broadcasting platforms) will be catastrophically weakened37. This direct economic squeeze on the commercial market derived from the original work and substantial consumption substitution (Substitutionskonkurrenz) based on the distribution of free animations are the most fatal factors that will be severely rejected without reservation when the U.S. Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights or the Chinese Supreme Court conduct a multi-element comprehensive balancing test of "fair use" 39 .

4. Coverage and supplementary rights protection structure: the sharp edge of anti-unfair competition law and the modern expansion of broadcasting organization rights

In some jurisdictions where the application of the law is ambiguous, or when it is difficult for the plaintiff to quickly prove due to technical reasons that the extremely short clip (such as a screenshot that only lasts for 1 second) has reached the "substantial similarity" threshold required for copyright infringement, the official authorisation system is not helpless. The Unfair Competition Law (UWG) and the modernized and upgraded system of neighboring rights (especially broadcasting organization rights) constitute the second and even more deterrent line of defence for rights holders to combat illegal graphic live broadcasts.

1\. Use the Anti-Unfair Competition Law to carry out precise crackdowns on "large-scale free-riding behavior"

In Germany's famous "Hartplatzhelden" (Hard Court Hero) case, a classic and cutting-edge judicial case, the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) heard a complex dispute involving the unauthorised collection and uploading of amateur football league game video clips by a third-party commercial website. In the long judgment of the case, although the BGH adhered to the traditional conservative stance of the civil law system, it once again confirmed that the pure sports event process (i.e. the game itself) was deliberately left blank by the legislators and was not subject to the monopoly protection of any proprietary intellectual property law (such as copyright). Therefore, the broad principle of freedom of imitation applies at this level 10. However, the BGH judges pointed out sharply and firmly: the lack of copyright protection does not mean that you can be exploited by others. According to the extremely important Article 3 of the German Unfair Competition Act (UWG § 3), which is a general provision prohibiting unfair business practices, the court has the right and should effectively regulate the behaviour of diners who maliciously appropriate and steal the results of other people’s hard work and huge investment. 10 The court further discussed that the commercial realizable value of football matches itself is extremely dependent on ticket sales and the development of audiovisual broadcast rights. If a third party engages in systematic infringement, causing the official organizer (such as the German Football Association WFV) to face the systemic risk of losing its huge initial investment (such as organizing league games and training referees), competition law must intervene as a "safety valve" to maintain the legitimate incentive mechanism of the market. 18

Translating this logic of competition law to China's judicial field, in many far-reaching cases, including the aforementioned "CCTV Network v. Phoenix Case" and "CCTV Network v. Instant App Case", although China's presiding court finally gave priority to the application of the Copyright Law in the main body of the judgment to directly protect the subject matter involved, in the long reasoning part, without exception, the defendant's unfair competition logic was extremely harshly analysed and criticized 11. As we all know, FIFA and its subcontracted global authorised broadcasters have invested billions of dollars in huge initial capital and human resources to prepare and organize a World Cup event, and to lay out technical networks around the world to produce the ultimate high-definition public signal. 4 Without paying even a penny of copyright fees to the official, the graphic live broadcast platform relied on the convenience of technical means to not only directly intercept the huge user traffic, advertising exposure click-through rate, and extremely valuable user in-app stay time that should have flowed to the official exclusive broadcast platform, but also directly used the appeal of the official signal to achieve user acquisition and valuation premium for its own platform. This kind of systematic "free-riding" and "eating people to get fat" business practices that directly transform other people's huge investment fruits and hard work into their own zero-cost profit-making tools seriously violates the recognized business ethics and principles of good faith in civilized markets, and constitutes a typical example of unfair competition 19.

2\. Modernization, revision and expansion of broadcasting rights of broadcasting organizations (blocking of pirated signal source links)

In addition to anti-unfair competition laws, various countries have launched major revisions to copyright laws in recent years, which have greatly strengthened the connotation and extension of "Broadcasting Organization Rights" in the traditional neighboring rights system. This provides a more direct legal basis for combating variant graphic live broadcast models. With the completion of the historic third revision of China's Copyright Law, the legislative body responded to the industry's urgent calls with far-sightedness and carried out a revolutionary reshaping of the rights of broadcasting organizations. In particular, it added and clarified the absolute control rights of broadcasting organizations over "online rebroadcasting"9. This legislative evolution means that if some graphic live broadcast platforms with extremely strong technical capabilities not only publish still screenshots or produce short animations on their pages, but also use extremely hidden embedded streaming media players and deep aggregate links (Deep Linking) or parsing push protocol and other complex technical means, directly capture and analyse the real-time live broadcast signal source of the official broadcaster in the background, and provide users with an immersive illegal aggregation service of "watching the original signal while posting text barrages and chatting about football" in its graphic channel. This comprehensive behavior, which seems to be cloaked in "graphic and text technology", will undoubtedly fall directly into the precise attack scope of the strengthened broadcasting rights of broadcasting organizations. In the explanation of the amendment, the legislative body clearly stated that severely cracking down on and regulating such online broadcasting behaviors that illegally make profits by illegally stripping and misappropriating the core transmission signal sources of radio stations and TV stations through technical means is the primary legislative intention and core mission of establishing and expanding the broadcasting rights of broadcasting organizations. 9

*Table 2: Multi-level comprehensive legal arsenal for regulating the behaviour of “live broadcasting with graphics and text”*

Path of legal regulation	Applicable core legal concepts and clauses	Characteristics of targeted infringement	Applicable typical judicial precedents or basis
Copyright Law (Most Efficient)	Audiovisual works; information network dissemination rights; fair use exclusion	Extensive use of official video screenshots and GIF animations for real-time information release. 14	Sina v. Phoenix (China) 14; WM-Marken case (Germany) 34
Anti-unfair competition law (covering the bottom)	Principle of good faith; free riding; misappropriation (Misappropriation)	It may not constitute substantially similar infringement, but it is a business model that systematically robs official event investment returns. 10	Hartplatzhelden case (Germany BGH) 18; CCTV v. Jiji case (China) 37
Broadcasting Organization Rights (New Technology)	Network Retransmission Rights in the Internet Era (Retransmission Right)	Technology captures, cracks and embeds official live broadcast public signal sources. 9	The third revision of China’s Copyright Law adds the right to control online broadcasts 9

5. Trademark infringement and implicit marketing (Ambush Marketing): a commercial compliance minefield that is extremely easy to touch in graphic live broadcasts

Even if a third-party Internet platform or self-media with a strong sense of compliance can technically completely abandon any unauthorised event broadcasts and adopt 100% pure "text-only live updates" to perfectly avoid the heavy risk of copyright infringement, it still faces an insurmountable legal mountain in the process of product UI visual design, project naming, page decoration and commercial operation promotion - namely FIFA's huge, extremely detailed and globally offensive trademark and commercial logo exclusive protection system 3.

1\. Suffocating restrictions on official logos and special vocabulary

In order to maximize the protection of the exclusive core business interests of those official top sponsors and partners at all levels who have paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in astronomical sponsorship fees, FIFA's legal department has applied for airtight, full-category trademark protection for its various events around the world, especially for all core words, derivative variants and visual elements related to the 2026 World Cup several years in advance.

According to the latest "FIFA Commercial Restrictions Code" and the strict "Public Viewing Regulations 2026" (Public Viewing Regulations 2026), any unofficial sponsor brands and unofficial authorised media must be absolutely prohibited from using the following core element groups when conducting any form of commercial report promotion, offline large-screen organization or online event planning:

The 2026 official emblem (Official Emblem), official mascot graphics and their specific names with strong visual indicators.
Special customized fonts with official style, highly recognizable official poster art design, and strictly protected official slogans (Official Slogan) such as "Now is all".
Any form of photographic image or illustrative depiction of the golden World Cup Trophy.
More stringently, not only graphics, but specific text combinations in any language version, including but not limited to the following absolutely prohibited words: FIFA World Cup 2026™, FIFA World Cup™, FIFA, World Cup, Copa Mundial (Spanish), Coupe Du Monde (French), MUNDIAL, etc., shall not be used as the core logo for commercial or quasi-commercial use 4.

Under this almost suffocating compliance framework, if a sports graphic live broadcast APP designed to attract traffic, in order to increase its authority, hangs the official emblem of the 2026 World Cup at the top of the header of its topic page without authorization, or in order to optimize search engine optimization (SEO), directly on its AP If the P client’s official name or column title uses a dazzling combination of words like “2026 World Cup Panoramic Graphic Live Broadcast Room”, FIFA’s legal monitoring system will immediately lock it, and its behaviour will constitute irrefutable and easy to obtain evidence of serious trademark infringement (Trademark Infringement) 3.

2\. Deep legal stranglehold on Ambush Marketing and false associations

Trademark infringement is only an explicit risk on the surface. A deeper and hard-to-prevent compliance trap lies in implicit marketing (also known as Ambush Marketing). Implicit marketing usually refers to some unofficial sponsor brands with great commercial ambitions using a series of carefully designed and sideline marketing communication methods to forcibly establish a conceptual connection between their own commercial activities and the World Cup events, thus making the public and consumers who do not know the truth mistakenly believe that they have an officially authorised sponsorship or commercial partnership with the large-scale event, thereby stealing the huge halo effect of the event for free. FIFA is world-famous and ruthless in its crackdown on such hidden marketing practices that seriously erode the foundation of its sponsor system47. Historical precedents are vivid in our minds: During a highlight match of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, there was even an extremely severe law enforcement case in which dozens of female spectators collectively wore dresses with a specific orange style in the stands that were identified as having a highly hidden association with an unofficial sponsor beer brand (Bavaria). The event security personnel directly forcibly expelled the stadium from the stadium on the grounds that they were suspected of covert propaganda and undermining the exclusive interests of the official sponsor (Budweiser). They even faced subsequent attempted legal proceedings. 47.

If we map this scenario to the field of digital graphic live broadcast in 2026: Suppose that a large commercial brand that does not have official sponsorship status (such as a well-known non-sponsored automobile manufacturer or sportswear brand) sponsors the "North American Football Feast Graphic Live Broadcast" column of a sports online media. In this process, even if the brand is extremely careful to avoid all official word trademarks and logos registered by FIFA, if it uses a large number of extremely eye-catching black and white in the timeline background design of the live broadcast page and the pop-up marketing advertising background board, Alternate football patterns, iconic geographical elements of the three host countries of the United States/Canada/Mexico, cheering silhouettes of fanatical fans, and are accompanied by highly suggestive, provocative and clearly pointing to the event's copy such as "The sword points to North America and helps the national team reach the top of the world." Faced with this situation, even if there is no direct infringement of trademark exclusive rights, FIFA and its legal enforcement team can still without hesitation rely on the "False Designation of Origin" or "Implied Association" under Section 43(a) of the powerful Lanham Act in the United States. Affiliation), or resort to the anti-unfair competition laws of various countries to file complex multi-party lawsuits involving multiple parties to the media and sponsoring brands, forcing them to be removed from the shelves and compensate for huge losses of goodwill 3. According to the compliance guidelines given by the event organizing committee in the "Public Screening Manual", in order to avoid such fatal legal disputes, any third party is only allowed to use common nouns to describe facts in ordinary copywriting paragraphs for purely objective editorial purposes and without any implicit associations when referring to the event. In order to fully comply with the regulations, operators of graphic live broadcasts are even forced to use words that are extremely banal, absolutely neutral, and lack commercial incitement (such as only using "North American Soccer Championship" or just loosely calling it "Soccer" or "The Summer Tournament") 49 . Although this ensures absolute legal safety, it will obviously significantly weaken the visibility of the column on search engines and its commercial marketing appeal to ordinary fans, constituting a huge contradiction between compliance and commercial benefits.

6. Macro Insights: The profound impact of technological evolution on the current legal framework and the reshaping of industrial response mechanisms

After fully and carefully analysing the current international legal texts and the massive existing cases in China, the United States and Europe, it is not enough to clearly understand the underlying logic of the entire industry if we only stay on the surface of the provisions. An in-depth analysis of the game between the magnificent macro-technological trends and commercial forces behind the graphic live streaming industry chain will help us gain more forward-looking industry insights.

1\. Deep media integration and the irreversible elimination of “pure image and text boundaries”

In the early era of dial-up Internet access and 2G mobile Internet, limited by bandwidth and terminal processing capabilities, graphic and text live broadcasts at that time were often extremely pure "text-only" updates, supplemented by simple table data 1. Due to its extremely poor visual expression and severe lag, this model does not pose any substantial commercial threat to official high-value television video broadcasts, so it is often outside the eyes of rights holders. However, with the popularization of 5G communication technology and the strong rise and pervasiveness of social media platforms (such as Weibo, TikTok, Instagram, X, etc.) in recent years, digital media is showing a strong multi-dimensional convergence and deep integration (Media Convergence) trend 1. In the modern sense, the top graphic live broadcast has evolved into an extremely complex product form: it is a hybrid aggregation of real-time highlighted text, external related hyperlinks (Hyperlinks), extremely active netizen barrage comments, ultra-low-latency high-definition animated screenshots of event scenes, and even legal low-latency API interface data with millisecond response. 1. This deep dissolution of media boundaries driven by technology has made the cunning defence strategy of many infringing platforms that use "we are doing text news reporting" as a judicial cover and secretly implement "high-density video image distribution" completely ineffective. When contemporary judicial authorities at all levels conduct infringement review, they no longer mechanically and discretely identify whether a certain piece of "text" or a certain "picture" crosses the boundary. Instead, they use the entire interactive "graphic and text live broadcast channel" as a systematic macro-business model to conduct an overall economic and legal assessment. If the judge determines that the core driving force of this business model to maintain high popularity and traffic is still extremely covert and unauthorised "picture transfer of core events" to please the visual nerves of the audience, then no matter how many seemingly legitimate original text comments are wrapped around it, it will surely suffer a double and ruthless blow from intellectual property law and anti-unfair competition law.

2\. How to combine the modern "internalization" of FIFA's business strategy with the elimination of blockages

Faced with billions of huge Internet natives (Digital Natives) fan groups have an extreme and rigid desire for fragmented content, fast information and real-time in-depth interaction. FIFA's senior decision-makers are increasingly aware that in the decentralized digital era, simply relying on the establishment of a huge legal team to conduct "containment", "issuance of warning letters" and protracted "sky-high litigation" on a global scale will not only be extremely costly to implement and the judgment cycle is too long, but also extremely easy to cause a serious public relations crisis in the public opinion field and a backlash from young fans. Therefore, when we observe the grand commercial strategic layout of the 2026 World Cup, we clearly capture the obvious strategic transformation trajectory of “removing and combining congestion”. On the one hand, in order to meet the massive demand for legal illustrations from formal commercial media, FIFA continues to select and designate formal international photo agencies such as IMAGO, which have nearly 30 years of experience in sports content services, as official partners through a rigorous licensing mechanism. These institutions can not only provide extremely low-latency real-time game high-definition API image distribution interfaces, but also innovatively provide compliant image assets that conform to the 9:16 vertical screen ecology for platforms such as TikTok, which are popular among contemporary young people, as well as compliant usage guidance specifically formulated for the extremely complex FIFA's strict IP rules 6. For major portals or large media with real commercial strength, if they need to conduct high-level, high-traffic live broadcasts of compliant graphics and text during the World Cup, they can build their own reporting matrix by signing a commercial agreement and purchasing such compliant image authorizations (Fully Licensed Images) with complete legal defect guarantees, thus fundamentally avoiding any infringement claims and the fatal risk of being suddenly removed from the shelves of major app stores 6. On the other hand, FIFA has taken a more proactive and high-profile approach and established in-depth "Preferred Platform" strategic partnerships with those streaming media and social traffic giants that have monopolized the attention of young users around the world. For example, during the extremely critical business development cycle of 2026, FIFA signed an unprecedented official cooperation agreement with TikTok and YouTube, the world's largest video platform. This agreement not only allows major official traditional broadcasters to stream selected short video game clips in TikTok's dedicated interactive hub (Dedicated Hub) to attract young users, but also authorizes full live broadcasts of some exciting games to be provided to the public for free on the YouTube platform, or open a very attractive first 10 minutes of free trial live broadcasts (such as the expanded agreement with Brazil's phenomenal streaming channel CazéTV)8. This is an extremely clever "traffic internalization" strategy in terms of business logic - FIFA is trying to

Actively cater to the tastes of young people, completely collect and centrally integrate the fragmented, real-time graphics and text updates and short video viewing needs that are currently scattered in every corner of the online world into an official digital ecosystem that is absolutely controllable, data trackable and profitable. By providing high-quality free value-added services that far exceed the clarity and smoothness of pirated platforms, FIFA directly drains the original traffic pool and gray living space of third-party illegal graphics and short video live broadcast platforms from the demand side.

3\. Efficient and accurate infringement blocking technology and real-time administrative injunction mechanism

The commercial attributes of real-time live broadcast of sports events have extremely special "timeliness": most or even more than 90% of the commercial realization value of a World Cup knockout match is concentrated in the short 90 to 120 minutes of the game. Once the referee on duty blows the final whistle to end the game and the suspense disappears, the value of this part of the live broadcast of the game will show a cliff-like or even devastating decline. Therefore, rights holders who obtain subsequent infringement claim judgments through traditional civil litigation procedures months or even years after the game (although sometimes the amount of compensation can reach millions or even tens of millions of yuan) 36 are often unable to truly compensate for the huge membership subscription fees and sky-high advertising exposure losses that the broadcaster loses in real time on the night of the game. In order to completely break this "time gap" deadlock in sports rights protection, in the world's top sports business jurisdictions with extremely developed countries, countries are establishing and improving extremely lethal real-time injunctions (Live Injunctions) and underlying technical blocking mechanisms at an unprecedented speed at the legislative and administrative level. A very representative successful example occurred in Germany: Germany's extremely special Internet Copyright Settlement and Clearing Centre (CUII), through in-depth data collaboration and legal linkage with the German Football League (DFL), which has huge political and economic influence, and the digital giant DAZN, which holds the core broadcast rights. Under this efficient mechanism, once the game starts and the monitoring system discovers that there are illegal sites for piracy, the rights holder can bypass the lengthy regular court hearing and quickly force the major core Internet service providers (ISPs) in Germany through a very fast emergency court order (Court-ordered blocking). Within a very short response time, directly implement an underlying network-level resolute blockade and blocking (ISP Blocking order) against the largest source of sports pirated streaming found in Germany or sites that provide illegal real-time live updates. 43 This real-time, dimensionally reduced joint law enforcement response mechanism with response units of hours or even minutes will become the Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all gray industry practitioners. For those black and gray industry operators who want to unscrupulously harvest a wave of astronomical traffic monetization by setting up temporary domain names and providing high-frequency live broadcasts of pirated graphics, texts and animations during the one-month major World Cup event, and then quickly log off and run away, this technical method of real-time unplugging of network cables will constitute a truly devastating dimensionality reduction blow to their fragile business monetization models.

7. Conclusion and review of strategic compliance recommendations

Based on the above-mentioned detailed deduction and systematic analysis of the latest international and national intellectual property laws and regulations (especially the core jurisdictions of China and the United States), the most benchmarking judicial rules, and the turbulent deep-seated business environment, this report draws the following extremely clear and rigorous legal core conclusions regarding the grand proposition of "does the graphic live broadcast of the World Cup violate the law?" which is very characteristic of the times:

First, there is no simple binary opposition of "absolutely legal" or "absolutely illegal" in the legal world for the live broadcast of graphics and text of the World Cup. Its true legality boundary depends extremely strictly on the "technical purity" of its content product structure and the "legitimacy of the source of the material". If a media organization's graphic live broadcast only relies on the profound professional sports knowledge accumulation of its registered editors or front-line reporters, using absolutely pure text (Text-only)** to provide real-time explanations, in-depth tactical comments, and objective news report updates on the ongoing game process (that is, objectively occurring public factual information), and there will never be any misleading official commercial registration logo in the decoration and operation of the entire page. This extremely restrained operating mode is unswervingly regarded in the constitutional frameworks of most modern countries ruled by law, including China, the United States and the European Union, as legitimate freedom of news reporting and freedom of expression of basic information that are protected by the law at an extremely high level, and in no way poses any risk of copyright infringement at any level.

Second, however, once this graphic live broadcast system incorporates so-called "image visual elements" (especially high-frequency screenshots of wonderful moments, high-definition GIF animations, and short videos directly cut into strips) in order to pursue the eye-catching effect without obtaining any official official authorization, the legal background and characterization of its behaviour will undergo irreversible and catastrophic qualitative changes, and it will face a very high and certain risk of infringement and illegal acts. The current mainstream judicial practice with global influence in China and Germany, after years of fierce debate, has now undisputedly and extremely firmly upgraded high-quality sports public signal images with extremely high commercial value to "audiovisual works/film works" that are strictly protected by the highest level of copyright law. Any systematic online dissemination of high-frequency screenshots and animated images without written authorisation cannot escape into the safe haven of "fair use" or "news citation" under strict legal scrutiny. On the contrary, due to its extremely strong commercial market substitution properties, it constitutes a direct and serious infringement of the core "information network dissemination rights" of exclusive broadcasters who have spent huge sums of money to purchase copyrights, or the "online broadcasting rights" newly added after the amendment of the law. At the same time, this so-called innovative "free-riding" business model that relies on large-scale parasitism on huge official investments will easily trigger the fatal red line of anti-unfair competition laws in various countries because it violates generally accepted business ethics.

Third, at the external defence level of official trademark protection and goodwill maintenance, which are often overlooked, the current global sports business compliance environment has evolved to be unprecedentedly stringent and even airtight**. Any organizer of live graphic events who intends to get a piece of the pie must have a professional legal team conduct extremely careful screening when promoting the event or naming their products, and completely strip away any FIFA proprietary top-level IP resource library that may cause the public to associate with "official sponsorship background" (this includes not only the emblem and special fonts and patterns that are well-known to the public, but also officially designated exclusive abbreviations and nouns that have been registered for death). Otherwise, even if the platform manages to escape the targeted copyright accusations against the video content by relying on extremely sophisticated technical means, it will definitely be difficult to escape the severe trademark infringement and huge commercial claims imposed by FIFA based on the rules of implicit marketing (Ambush Marketing).

In the face of the 2026 global super sports business feast that is bound to break human ratings records and is unprecedented across North America, any digital media organization or aggregation platform that attempts to use the regulatory time difference of "live broadcast of graphics, text, and animations" to arbitrarily obtain huge traffic dividends should completely abandon the dangerous fluke mentality of "the law does not punish the public" or trying to "edge the system." In the future competition of sports digital content, companies must establish an extremely strict internal copyright compliance pre-review mechanism with one-vote veto power, and unswervingly adhere to the basic principles of business civilization of "obtain authorisation first before using". The specific strategic response path should be: decisively strip off all unauthorised wild animations and short video clips that pose fatal risks from the front-end product line, embrace sunny commercial cooperation, and actively sign business framework cooperation agreements with formal picture agencies that have official approval (such as professional API data and image suppliers). This is a legal way to obtain low-latency, high-quality event picture authorisation with legal exemption guarantees. Only in this way can major digital media fully enjoy the huge traffic feast of the World Cup and safeguard their legitimate business interests, while at the legal level, perfectly avoid serious legal compliance risks and astronomically huge infringement claims that can cause devastating reputational damage to enterprises and lead to the rupture of capital chains.

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