In June 2017, three members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, cut political and economic ties with Qatar, their neighbor and fellow GCC member. The boycott or siege of Qatar came shortly after Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his first international trip as president of the United States. Yet while the role of the United States in the recent divisions within the GCC has received considerable attention, the deeper roots of the conflict and the role of the British empire in establishing the political and economic fault lines have been underappreciated. The argument of this paper is twofold. First, it contends that British colonialism, through its shaping of the boundaries and political institutions of the Arab Gulf states, produced lasting international divisions that led to the current crisis within the GCC over Qatar. Second, this paper demonstrates how postcolonial struggles related to the political economy of the media are centrally situated within this crisis. As Qatar has globally advanced its media production, it has increasingly challenged Saudi Arabia's international media empire. A critical recent factor in this struggle is Qatar's selection to be host of the 2022 World Cup. Qatar's hosting of the highly viewed international sports event constitutes a major economic and media shift in the region while at the same time undermining the economic and political roles of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a challenge they could not allow to go uncontested. Through historical analysis of media production in the Gulf, this paper investigates the contemporary inter-Arab struggle over the political economy of the global media through the lenses of postcolonial politics. Its findings conclude that the current crisis within the Arab Gulf is rooted in the political order and disputes established by British imperialism and then replicated under the system of US hegemony.