MUMBAI: Saudi rogue broadcaster BeOutQ, under the cosh from FIFA, UEFA and CAF (Africa’s football governing body) for stealing the live feed from Qatar-based TV network beIN Sport, has now extended its thievery to include Formula 1.
No prizes for guessing that F1 rights for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region also rest with beIN Sport.
A Formula One spokesman said content belonging to beIN Sports had been transmitted by BeOutQ.
“Formula One takes intellectual property infringement of this nature extremely seriously, we are looking into the issue and those that are involved and will take appropriate action,” Liberty Media owned F1 said in a statement at the French Grand Prix Sunday.
The bootlegging network has with impunity been stealing feeds of every game of the ongoing Russia 2018 World Cup and rebroadcasting it onto a MENA footprint via the Arabsat satellite provider.
Pertinently, Riyadh-based Arabsat lists the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as its largest shareholder.
To be clear, BeOutQ’s piracy of the World Cup (and UEFA tournaments before that) is a product of regional politics. The root of the problem lies in the fact that it is beIN Sports that holds media rights for FIFA and UEFA in the MENA region.
BeOutQ sprung up as an in your face pirating TV station with beIN as its chief target in the wake of the declaration by Saudi Arabia (which its allies, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt rubber stamped) in June 2017 that Qatar was sponsoring terrorism in the region. Following the declaration, the Saudi Arabia-led bloc severed diplomatic and transport ties with Doha and imposed an economic blockade on the Gulf state.
After it launched its blockade, Saudi Arabia banned the sale of beIN broadcast boxes and stopped existing customers from renewing subscriptions. Which is what has led to the tournament not being officially broadcast in the country, despite its team having qualified for the World Cup.
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