Advanced TV Network, a bankrupt online streaming provider, has been ordered by a Swedish court to pay nearly SEK210m (€20.5m/$24m) in damages after illegally distributing content in the country, including football’s English Premier League.
The company, which distributed Arabic-language content, was ordered to pay SEK194.8m to pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports and SEK14.6m to Albanian media group DigiAlb.
“It is, according to the court's opinion, shown beyond reasonable doubt that ATN at no time… had the rights to broadcast the beIN channels in question,” the court said in its verdict.
ATN’s owner, Hamid al-Hamid, was also sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. His son Ahmed and another business associate were sentenced to one year each.
ATN declared bankruptcy in September 2016, but the process has not been completed. The Reuters news agency said that it is understood that the damages can be extracted from assets belonging to ATN or its owners.
The case was originally filed by Nordic Content Protection, an anti-piracy industry group, which said: “The prison sentences and record fines handed down in this case send a clear message to broadcast pirates.”