Saudi Arabia

Football leagues ramp up pressure on Saudi Arabia

5 August 2019

In an unprecedented collaboration, football leagues FIFA, the AFC, UEFA, the Bundesliga, LaLiga, the Premier League and Lega Serie A have called on the authorities in Saudi Arabia to take action against pirate pay-TV operator BeoutQ. The seven leagues have said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia must take “swift and decisive action” against the pirate TV company. The leagues say that they have been unable to get any Saudi Arabia-based legal firm to represent them in their efforts to shut down the operation that is taking signals of Bein and rebroadcasting them to viewers in Saudi Arabia with a different logo.

The joint statement reads:

We, the rights holders of various football competitions, collectively condemn in the strongest possible terms the ongoing theft of our intellectual property by the pirate broadcaster known as ‘beoutQ’ and call on the authorities in Saudi Arabia (KSA) to support us in ending the widespread and flagrant breaches of our intellectual property rights taking place in the country.

Since May 2018, we have collectively been working with an international legal counsel to monitor and compile evidence against beoutQ, whose broadcasts are regularly and on an industrial scale made available on an illegal basis. Following thorough analysis by technical experts of how beoutQ operates from a technical perspective, we are satisfied that beoutQ is operating specifically to target customers in KSA and is utilising the facilities of at least one KSA-based entity.

Over the past 15 months, we spoke to nine law firms in KSA, each of which either simply refused to act on our behalf or initially accepted the instruction, only later to recuse themselves.

As copyright holders we have reached the conclusion, regrettably, that it is now not possible to retain legal counsel in KSA which is willing or able to act on our behalf in filing a copyright complaint against beoutQ. We feel we have now exhausted all reasonable options for pursuing a formal copyright claim in KSA and see no alternative but to pursue beoutQ and a solution to this very serious problem of piracy by other means.

beoutQ’s infringement of our rights inevitably harms every aspect of the industry, from the rights holders to legitimate licensees, consumers and fans, participants (including players, clubs and national teams) and ultimately, the sport itself.

We have welcomed previous statements by the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information and the Saudi Government against beoutQ. However, given the scale of beoutQ’s piracy in KSA and that the piracy continues unabated, we request that the Ministry and the Saudi Government take swift and decisive action against beoutQ.

We are committed, collectively and individually, to working with all relevant authorities to combat the beoutQ piracy.

The piracy affects other sporting rights holders, including Wimbledon and Formula 1.

beIN Media launches anti-piracy website

18 January 2019

As the AIB has reported over the past year, the satellite network BeoutQ is broadcasting sport and entertainment programmes from across the world in what can only be described as industrial-scale piracy. Now Qatar’s beIN Media – the broadcaster most affected by the piracy operation – is ramping up its international efforts to hold the pirates to account.

It is widely believed that Saudi Arabia is behind the piracy operation, borne out by the fact that an operation on the scale that beoutQ operates requires immense resources of the type that only a nation state or a huge, long-established commercial organisation would have.

Now beIN has launched a website giving details of what it says is the evidence it has gathered about the beoutQ operation. It provides a time-line from before the launch of beoutQ through to the present, including beIN’s US$1bn compensation claim against Saudi Arabia.

Views on climate change across the world

7 May 2010

The new People’s Choice award in this year’s AIBs is very exciting for a number of reasons. It is the first time we are asking the general public to vote for awards, which allows the shortlisted entrants to gain a wider exposure for their programmes, as viewers will come from throughout the world, including many countries where the programmes are not currently broadcast. The voting process will also use social media to gain interest and attention, providing another example of the sort of audience engagement and participation which is becoming more and more important to broadcasting in the 21st century.

In addition climate change, the subject of programmes in the People’s Choice award, is a highly topical subject which provokes fierce debate and raises issues which could have a dramatic impact on the way that all nations live. Different countries, and even different tribes and regions within countries, risk being affected in different ways. For example, the indigenous people of the Amazon risk their lands turning into dry savanna (see here for how our sponsor, ADB, is helping the Surui tribe) while the coastal regions risk more flooding.

Because of the differing risks, as well as different political viewpoints, the range of views on climate change is enormous and the challenges of exploring and explaining the science are great. We hear about the fierce debates in the US Senate ; India and China are signing up to the Copenhagen accord; a survey in Africa shows that many Africans blame God and not global emissions for climate change; countries as diverse as Mongolia, Saudi Arabia and Madagascar show increasing awareness by joining in Earth Day celebrations.

We are eager to see the submissions for the People’s Choice award to see how broadcasters from throughout the world are tackling this contraversial issue which raises such passion and which is so important to all of our futures.