Kosovo's Independent Media Commission (NKM) has decided to ban the broadcasting of the Arena Sport channels by distributors over their glorification of the attack that happened in the north of Kosovo in late September.

Marko Milosavljevic, professor at the Ljubljana University’s Social Sciences Faculty, commented on the case for N1’s Newsnight programme on Thursday evening.

According to NKM’s head, Jeton Mehmeti, the decision to ban Arena Sport has been made because the channels had broadcast content that violate the regulations in Kosovo.

Asked whether he is surprised that sports channels are being used for political propaganda by the government in Serbia, Milosavljevic said he was not.

“It is clear that the Serbian Telecom is a state project that has always been under political control and made moves in line with the ruling politics, whether it was about business decisions, buying up sporting rights or blocking independent media,” Milosavljevic said. “I don’t think this is an accident, a case of a single editor’s decision, but a political decision that had to have come from the top, which is not surprising because everyone knows the true politics of Belgrade when it comes to this. It’s just that this then affects other channels. It’s a sort of a dialectical game – there is the question of what will be the impact of this on the Telecom Serbia and Arena Sport in Serbia, and they in turn will use that to send a message saying how they are the victims of the Kosovo regime, trying to position themselves as heroes and patriots.”

Commenting on why the state telecom had even invested so much money into a media company with sports content, Milosavljevic said he believes this has never been a sports project.

“This was always a geopolitical interest that was supposed to serve as a starting point of expansion of some views and other interests of the ruling politics in Belgrade, which then spread out not just throughout Serbia, but into other Western Balkans countries, even Croatia and Slovenia. This is a significant problem – how is it possible that a state-owned company of a non-EU country not in line with EU standards can influence and be of benefit to the geostrategic interests of a regime which is not fully democratic and which can use any platform, including sports channels, to spread its political propaganda?” he added.

By taking responsibility for the incident in the Banjska village in the north of Kosovo, did Milan Radoicic distract the Serbian media from another individual widely seen as the orchestrator of the event – President Aleksandar Vucic? Milosavljevic points out it is important to see who is hiding behind the big picture, adding it is an open secret that the decisions in the biggest tabloids in Serbia are not made by their editors.

“This is about showcasing that Telecom Serbia, in all of these cases, is the extended arm of the ruling party and that is its purpose, but, of course, no one will openly take responsibility for that,” he said.

Asked whether Serbia will be able to avoid sanctions if it turns out that President Vucic really is behind everything, he said that would be difficult to prove, as there is probably no paper trail or SMS messages.

“However, it is known that loyalists were put in all those positions, they do nothing independently, especially not such important things like publishing those messages, without the nod from the key people in the country. Even if it had not been the President, the responsibility is still objectively his because they appointed the director in the Telecom Serbia, which is under clear state control.”

Can Arena Sport lose its sports rights because of getting involved in politics?

“I think this will primarily be about how other authorities respond to similar issues, such as regulators in Bosnia and Herzegovina and other countries,” Milosavljevic said, adding: “If similar decisions are made and the crisis in Arena spreads to other markets, that will be a problem and a question whether they are relevant for the market. I doubt that the Premier League would pull back its rights because they received a large sum of money for those rights and I doubt they have something like that covered in the contract: EU countries never think about the idea that sports and sports channels may be used to send clear political messages. Sports channels are not the place for such content. I don’t think they have a direct economic interest. That may happen if Arena gets blocked in other Western Balkans countries. Then the situation would get serious.”

“The incident in Kosovo shows very clearly the influence of politics on something that is seemingly so far away from it, a sports channel. It clearly shows the actual goals of the entire project and media surrounding the Telecom Serbia. The economic interests are secondary, the primary interest is using the channel for the geopolitical purposes of the ruling party,” The Ljubljana University professor concluded.