NEWS & VIEWS
August 2018
7
Uniting as one against piracy
Established in 2014, beIN Media Group is
a Qatari sports and entertainment global
network broadcasting 60 channels across
43 countries within Europe, North America,
Asia, Australia, Turkey, the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA), and in seven different
languages. Aside from building the beIN
Sports network, the company has expanded
beyond sports into entertainment through
production and distribution, as well as in the
digital space.
In MENA, the network operates as beIN
MENA in 24 countries in this particular
region, and has been acquiring broadcast
rights for various sports events held globally,
from football to tennis, motorsports and
cycling. One of the sports rights beIN re-
cently secured was the rights for the 2018
FIFA World Cup in Russia.
At the quadrennial tournament, which
concluded last month, beIN’s latest satellite
viewing figures revealed that viewership
of the tournament on the beIN network
increased by more than 100 million, in
comparison to the same period in the 2014
FIFA World Cup in Brazil. According to beIN,
the cumulative viewership over the first 15
days of the tournament stood at a total of
1.135 billion.
As the exclusive rights holder to the 2018
FIFA World Cup in the MENA region, beIN
dedicated six channels to broadcast all 64
matches of the football tournament — beIN
Sports MAX 1 and beIN Sports MAX 2 in
Arabic, beIN Sports MAX 3 in English, and
beIN Sports MAX 4 in French. All matches
were also aired in 4K/Ultra HD (UHD) on the
beIN 4K/UHD broadcast channel.
Furthermore, beIN news channels pro-
❝ Piracy undercuts the value
of sporting rights, and this
should be a major concern
for rights holders around
the globe. If left unchecked,
this will have a dramatic
and long-term impact on the
grassroots funding of the
sports that we all enjoy. ❞
vided viewers with related updates of the
tournament. Apart from broadcasting on
satellite in 4K/UHD and HD, the beIN experi-
ence was also available on devices via beIN
Connect, beIN’s over-the-top (OTT) video
streaming platform.
beIN recently also sealed a two-year part-
nership with two telcos operating in the UAE,
Etisalat and du. Headquartered in Dubai, du
was commercially rebranded from Emirates
Integrated Telecommunications Company
(EITC) in 2006, and offers mobile and fixed
telephony, broadband connectivity and IPTV
services. Under this partnership, du subscrib-
ers were able to enjoy all 64 matches of the
2018 FIFA World Cup live in HD across four
beIN Sports MAX channels.
As for Etisalat, the two-year agreement
gave the telco’s eLife TV the right to re-
broadcast all four beIN Sports MAX channels,
as well as the beIN 4K/UHD channel, to its
entire IPTV customer base in the UAE.
In an attempt to expand distribution,
beIN also offered to broadcast 22 matches
of the 2018 FIFA World Cup on beIN free-to-
air (FTA) channels in the region, thus bring-
ing the tournament to the widest possible
Arabic-speaking audiences.
While the world saw France clinch the
champions title, beIN was facing a “mass-
scale” content theft of FIFA’s rights, despite
its best efforts to deliver all the live action
from Russia to its audience. The Qatari net-
work has claimed that a pirate channel has
“stolen every single game” of the 2018 FIFA
World Cup.
Tom Keaveny, managing director of beIN
MENA, told APB: “This is piracy on a massive
commercial scale with multimillion-dollar
funding underpinning it. We have spent
many months analysing and tracing the
bootlegged signal, and have never come
across this level of technical sophistication
before.
“We know how the signal is being pirated
and we continue to work through various
avenues to disrupt this illegal operation,
which simply should not be allowed to hap-
pen. Piracy on this scale represents a major
long-term threat to legal broadcasters the
world over.”
To combat against piracy, beIN has urged
FIFA, football’s governing body, to take legal
action against pirate broadcasters. In a state-
ment, FIFA stated that the organisation is
beIN MENA operates in 24 countries
in the region, and secured the rights
to broadcast all 64 matches of the
2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
Despite regional and time
differences, sports is one of
the few genres today that
unites fans from all over the world. On the pitch, sports
teams are battling it out to clinch the golden ball. And
off the pitch, broadcasters are contending with escalating
prices in securing sports rights, as well as the long-term
war against piracy. APB prompts beIN Media Group, the
sports rights holder to the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia
in the MENA region, on how it brought the quadrennial
tournament to the wider Arabic-speaking audiences, and
the challenges it faced in combating against piracy.
aware of the illegal distribution of the open-
ing matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in
the MENA region.
FIFA also stressed that it takes infringe-
ments of its intellectual property “very
seriously” and “is exploring all options to
stop the infringement of its rights, includ-
ing in relation to action against legitimate
organisations that are seen to support such
illegal activities”.
Sophie Jordan, executive director of legal
affairs, general legal counsel, beIN Media
Group, concluded: “beIN has invested sig-
nificant sums of money to purchase the legal
rights to broadcast world sports, including
the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. We also in-
vest heavily in infrastructure and production
to provide a best-in-class viewing experience.
“Piracy undercuts the value of sporting
rights, and this should be a major concern
for rights holders around the globe. If left
unchecked, this will have a dramatic and
long-term impact on the grassroots funding
of the sports that we all enjoy.”
SHARING
STORIES 2.0
The way in which we share stories has come a long way from the days of
telling them around the campfi re. Nowadays the media industry fulfi ls this
innate craving we have for stories by broadcasting, streaming and publishing
content on a multitude of different devices and platforms.
At MEDIAGENIX it is our mission to make sure they can do this with optimum
effi ciency, fl exibility and creativity.
Streamlined workfl ows, optimised content life cycle management and
stories that effortlessly fi nd their audience: that is why we continuously
develop our Broadcast Management System WHATS’ON from a content-
centric perspective.
LET’S TALK
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