LONDON: The English Premier League is ratcheting up the pressure on Saudi-owned satellite television operator Arabsat in the case of Riyadh based pirate TV channel beoutQ, which has with impunity been illegally broadcasting football matches across the Middle East and North Africa.
After moving the the European Commission, the Premier League has said it is taking steps to bring legal action in Saudi Arabia.
“The Premier League strongly condemns the illegal broadcast piracy of its matches currently taking place in Saudi Arabia and available in multiple territories throughout the Middle East by an illegal pirate channel called ‘beoutQ’,” the league said.
The Premier League statement added: “The Premier League has seen compelling evidence demonstrating ‘beoutQ’ is a highly sophisticated pirate operation which has used the services of satellite provider Arabsat to distribute the illegal content.”
BeIN Sports was only recently awarded the exclusive broadcasting rights across MENA for another three seasons up to the 2021/22 campaign after paying ‘tens of millions’ for them.
“The Premier League takes piracy in all its forms extremely seriously and is committed to working with its broadcast partners and regulatory authorities in territories all around the world to stop the non-authorised exploitation of its content,” reads the EPL statement.
The announcement followed the decision last week by the Premier League and La Ligue to write to the European Commission about beoutQ so pressure can be brought to bear on the Saudi authorities.
The league further stated: “As such, the Premier League has appointed legal counsel in Saudi Arabia to begin the process of bringing legal action against the parties involved in this piracy.
“Given the strong copyright framework in Saudi Arabia, the Premier League is confident that the Saudi Arabian authorities will ultimately uphold its clear rights when the action is commenced.”
Earlier this month BeIN, which has paid billions of dollars to secure exclusive rights to broadcast English Premier League and French Ligue 1 matches live, provided “irrefutable evidence” that beoutQ was illegally showing hundreds of live European football matches and being carried on Arabsat.
The organised piracy operation was also carried out during the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
The row has been dragging in major sporting federations, alarmed that expensively-acquired television rights may be at risk.
In July, FIFA said it was preparing to take legal action in Saudi Arabia against pirate broadcasters.
Qatar-based beIN Sports holds the legal rights for the broadcast of all Premier League fixtures across the Middle East and North Africa, having recently extended its exclusive agreement until 2021-2022.
Not surprisingly the Saudi government has given the missives coming its way on the matter the royal ignore. Instead, the General Authority for Competition for Saudi Arabia on Tuesday announced it has cancelled beIN Media Group’s license to broadcast in the country, along with placing a $2.6m fine on the company.
The reasons given for its punitive action: Due to beIN’s “violation of competition laws” in Saudi Arabia.
beoutQ’s illegal transmissions of major European leagues – as well as the Champions League, World Cup and Formula 1 – began last season after a diplomatic row broke out between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
In June 2017 a Saudi-led alliance led a diplomatic and trade boycott of the tiny Gulf state, which included banning the sale of beIN satellite decoder boxes in the desert kingdom.
Since then, beoutQ has brazenly been stealing the beIN feed and superimposing its own logo over the beIN one for broadcast over Arabsat.
In January the Association for the Protection of Sporting Programmes (APPS), a grouping of broadcasters, the professional leagues and the sports’ federal bodies, met to work out how to combat the threat of piracy which has been described by UEFA as a threat to the future of European football.
Didier Quillot, the French LFP Executive Director General, said: ‘Pirate broadcasts attack directly at the economic heart of the sport and we must unite in our struggle against this practice’.
