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Telemundo keeps broadcast rights for Trinidad & Tobago World Cup qualifiers vs. Panama and Mexico

Just three days after Telemundo sued two Florida-based sports rights agencies in U.S. federal court over rights to Trinidad & Tobago home World Cup qualifiers, the network announced it had come to a settlement. Just what that settlement entailed, though, was unclear.

UPDATE: Here's yet another twist in the plot. Lasana Liburd of Wired868.com reports that the Trinidad & Tobago Football Association is "refusing to allow broadcast rights holders to operate inside the Hasely Crawford Stadium" in Port-of-Spain ahead of Friday's World Cup qualifier between the Soca Warriors and Panama. So even though Telemundo has the right to air the game, it's not known if they'll be able to produce a broadcast of it.

Just three days after Telemundo sued two Florida-based sports rights agencies in U.S. federal court over rights to Trinidad & Tobago home World Cup qualifiers, the network announced it had come to a settlement. Just what that settlement entailed, though, was unclear.

The lack of clarity might have been related to the fact that legal proceedings had been launched in Trinidad at the same time, as Telemundo had threatened to do in its U.S. court filings.

On Wednesday, a judge in Port-of-Spain's High Court ruled that the Trinidad & Tobago Football Association is bound to the existing contract with Telemundo. Lasana Liburd of Trinidad-based Wired868.com has details here.

That contract was officially signed in December 2014, after the TTFA and other Caribbean nations gave their broadcast rights to the Caribbean Football Union, which negotiated a deal with Traffic Sports on those nations' collective behalf. Traffic then signed a deal with Telemundo, which announced the agreement in February 2015.

In November of 2016, TTFA president David John-Williams tried to get the governing body out of the Caribbean Football Union contract, claiming that Traffic's collapse gave him grounds to do so.

The manner in which John-Williams made his move was ... well ... here's how Liburd puts it:

Rather than take the moral high ground by transparently pleading its case against the CFU in Jamaica or against Traffic in Florida, the local football body took an approach that now appears to be standard business for the current administration.

The John-Williams-led board pretended that its contract with the CFU and, by extension, Traffic and Telemundo, did not exist.

High Court judge Mira Dean-Armorer wasn't having that. As you can read here, she forced the TTFA to play by the established rules.

However, it's notable that she applied those rules only to this month's World Cup qualifiers: Friday vs. Panama and Tuesday against Mexico (which is where the big money is for Telemundo, of course).

The door appears open for the TTFA to try to strike a new rights deal for the Soca Warriors' two Hex home games later this year: against Honduras on Sept. 1 and against the United States on Oct. 10.

Yes, the above paragraph does indeed say "the United States." And yes, that is the last day of World Cup qualifying. Which means there's still a significant part of the story that is still to be written.

The Twitter handle above is for my general news reporting. My soccer handle is @thegoalkeeper. Contact me there for any questions about this post.