Saudi Arabia permanently cancels the license of Qatar's beIN Sports
The Saudi Arabian General Competition Authority (GAC) said Tuesday it had permanently and definitively cancelled the license of Qatar's beIN Sports, which was banned from broadcasting on the Saudi spectrum in mid-2017, the year in which the Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain established a diplomatic and economic blockade on the Qatari state after accusing it of supporting cross-border terrorism.
The GAC issued a communiqué that includes the fine imposed on the Gulf monarchy's sports channel, which amounts to more than ten million rials (2.7 million dollars) for "monopolistic practices," an accusation that the station itself denied.
BeIN Sports holds the broadcasting rights in the Middle East region to several major global sporting events and entertainment shows, including the British Premier League football competition, the European league tournament that currently moves the largest amount of money in television rights.
GAC pointed out that beIN Sports had "abused its dominant position through various monopoly practices" related to what it detailed as an exclusive sports broadcasting package for the 2016 European Football Championship football matches organized by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
The channel was initially banned in Saudi Arabia following the embargo imposed from Riyadh, Cairo, Manama and Abu Dhabi, which led to the severing of diplomatic and commercial ties with Qatar in June 2017 because of Doha's alleged support for terrorist practices, something denied by the Gulf nation.
On this point, it should be noted that the World Trade Organization (WTO) last month ruled in support of the Saudi Arabian position to prevent even the Qatari chain from obtaining legal advice in the Kingdom for reasons of national security.
In response to the sanction, beIN Media Group (the parent company to which the sports channel belongs) has issued an official statement: "The decision makes no sense at all levels, as it prohibits beIN from packaging its rights in the standard way that sports and entertainment broadcasters around the world do and, indeed, other players active in the Saudi market do as well.
In 2018, Qatar filed a complaint with the WTO itself alleging that Saudi Arabia was blocking beIN's broadcasting on its territory and complained that it had refused to take effective action against alleged piracy of beIN content by the beoutQ label.
The WTO also found last month that Saudi Arabia had breached intellectual property rights regulations by failing to prosecute beoutQ's managers while supporting Riyadh's view that it could prevent the Qatari broadcaster from obtaining legal advice in the Kingdom for national security reasons.
BeIN itself said that the GAC decision was the result of legal proceedings that "repeatedly violated beIN's due process rights.
BeoutQ is a channel that is widely available in Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh has repeatedly said that it is not based there, and that the national government is committed to protecting intellectual property, as Reuters recalled.
The beIN Media group, of which the sports channel beIN Sports is part, is owned by the Qatari state and had already complained that Saudi Arabia was encouraging piracy of its various signals. It had also expressed strong opposition to the desired landing of the Saudis in the English Premier League, as reported by Qatar's Yousef al-Obaidly. A long awaited arrival that has manifested itself for example with the process of buying Newcastle United FC, behind which was the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of the Saudi kingdom.
The beIN Media Group, which holds the broadcasting rights to English Premier League matches in the Middle East region, accused Saudi Arabia of supporting a piracy network that was seriously violating its valuable television rights by diverting its broadcast signal. His current three-year contract is valued at $500 million, making it the second-largest international deal linked to the English League.
The New York Times reported that beoutQ's piracy operation, which independent investigators have linked to Saudi Arabia, is the largest in the history of sport, involving the world's top sporting events, whose broadcasting rights were sold to beIN, making the Qatari channel the largest buyer of sports rights in the world.
In this operation, beIN's transmissions were allegedly passed through Arabsat, a regional satellite operator in which Saudi Arabia is the largest investor, and beIN's image was allegedly replaced by a beoutQ logo.
