ABSTRACT
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of the fastest-growing sports markets in the world, mainly because of Qatar’s BeIN pay television network, which since 2013 has acquired regional rights for most of the world’s top leagues and competitions, including virtually all of European football. BeIN is currently the world’s largest sports broadcaster by contractual rights, if not by geographic reach. Beginning in 2017, however, Qatar found itself the object of a blockade by its Gulf neighbours. BeIN found itself the target of BeoutQ, a state-sponsored, industrial-scale piracy operation distributed on the Riyadh-based Arabsat satellite. BeoutQ later moved to Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) and distributed hundreds of pirated sports channels from Europe and the United States. The resulting chaos plunged the MENA sports rights market into turmoil. It threatened the business model of sports broadcasters who rely on rights exclusivity everywhere. In 2020, Qatar won its piracy case against Saudi Arabia at the World Trade Organization; though Saudi Arabia has consistently denied any responsibility for BeoutQ. The blockade ended in January 2021, but the future of sports broadcasting in the region will remain a political issue.
