Ivorian fans watch the match between Ivory Coast and Columbia in a neighborhood in the central part of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Buenos Aires

Times are tough for Argentine President Cristina Kirchner. The economy stinks. Inflation is sky-high. Her approval rating stands at around 26%.

Yet after Argentina beat the Netherlands on penalties after the teams were tied 0-0 after 120 minutes in the World Cup semifinals on Wednesday, Kirchner may be reminding the country's soccer-crazed residents that her government enabled them to watch the nerve-racking triumph free. Kirchner's government stripped lucrative broadcasting rights from a private sector partnership in 2009, providing free viewership of local soccer matches to the entire country—meaning most of 42 million Argentines will be able to watch Sunday's final against Germany.


In 2010, the government broadcast World Cup matches free on its state-run television channel and has done so again this year, a move that has proved hugely popular, even among some government critics. Though some World Cup matches were available free before the takeover, many Argentines couldn't see them because they lacked cable TV or lived too far from open-air antennas.

Justifying the takeover of broadcast rights, Kirchner stood beside soccer legend Diego Maradona in 2009 and accused the private sector of "kidnapping goals" from viewers the way the 1976-1983 military dictatorship kidnapped and tortured thousands of Argentines.

"I don't want a society of kidnappings anymore," Kirchner said.

Watching World Cup soccer may not be a basic human right. But leaders across the world recognize that a lot of people view it as such, and that makes the World Cup a political opportunity. In Thailand, a military junta that seized power this spring persuaded a private company—which had planned to air only 22 World Cup games free—to expand that number to all 64 matches. The new leaders called it a strategy to "return happiness to the Thai people."

In countries that agree on little else, there is agreement that World Cup games ought to be freely viewable. The list of countries where the 2014 World Cup appeared on public or state television, or free on network television, includes Russia, England, Portugal, Venezuela, Ecuador, China, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Greece, Switzerland and Poland. Even countries that didn't qualify, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria all agree that public broadcasters ought to televise free World Cup games.

In the U.S., games on ESPN required a cable subscription, but Univision streamed the games in the early rounds free.

Nowhere are games freer than in Brazil, and that became a problem after Brazil quickly fell behind 5-0 in its embarrassing 7-1 defeat to Germany on Tuesday. The painful remainder of the game—viewable on three different channels—was difficult to escape.

In some places during this World Cup, freedom came with an asterisk. Iran's national broadcast company, IRIB, is airing the games free but with a 10-second delay so it can censor "un-Islamic'' shots of people drinking and women in tank tops and shorts. For the first time, the country has also banned any public viewing of the games at cafes and restaurants, apparently out of concern about what leaders are calling "the unique culture'' of Brazil.

In Italy, the home country's matches were free but other games require a subscription to Sky Italy. In Mexico, broadcasters Televisa and TV Azteca, which between them control more than 90% of the free-to-air television market, planned to air the same 30 World Cup matches. Additional games required a cable subscription.

In Colombia, the approach of the World Cup coincided with a growing standoff between local broadcasters and cable companies. Local broadcasters were demanding a new fee that cable companies didn't want to pay, raising the possibility that local broadcasters—which control World Cup coverage—would stop supplying shows to the cable companies. But with viewership of the games in peril, local broadcasters suddenly announced a decision to put off the fight until at least September, well after World Cup ends.

Here in Argentina, not everybody was thrilled when the government compared private control of soccer-viewership rights to previous eras of oppression. Human-rights activists such as Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel called the comparison a "barbarity."

Write to Taos Turner at taos.turner@wsj.com