BeIN Sports, the global pay-television broadcaster, has expanded its on-demand offer in the Middle East and North Africa with Fifa World Cup content, documentaries and behind-the-scenes footage as the Covid-19 crisis continues to wreak havoc on live sports.
The broadcaster has announced that a range of Fifa World Cup films, dating between 1954 and 2002, will be included on its platform in the region.
Other content includes documentaries on former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger and Liverpool winger Mohammed Salah, a four-part Uefa Champions League documentary series and El Clasico matches from 2017 and 2018.
BeIN subscribers can access the new sports on-demand library at no extra cost by connecting their set-top box to the internet (and visiting beIN On Demand on their beIN box).
World football governing body Fifa has allowed broadcast partners to access its archive rights. A similar move was made in Germany by sports broadcaster Sport1.
BeIN has already made use of archive World Cup footage during the Covid-19 lockdown, broadcasting matches from the 2018 Fifa World Cup in France.
Fifa took its archive rights sales in-house in early 2019. World football’s governing body has also opened up its match archive across its owned and social media channels as part of its #WorldCup@Home campaign.
The Infront agency previously managed the ‘Fifa Films’ business prior to the body taking it archive distribution back in-house. That decision saw Fifa transport its physical archive from the agency’s offices in Zug, Switzerland, to Zurich where Fifa is based.