Football’s English Premier League has reiterated its support of beIN Media Group for its ongoing campaign against pirate channel beoutQ.
The Premier League has spoken out after beIN last week announced the launch of a ‘reveal all’ website designed to publicly expose what it claims is the industrial scale theft of world sports and entertainment carried out by the Saudi Arabia-based pirate channel and Arabsat, the Riyadh-headquartered satellite provider, over the past 18 months.
The website, beoutq.tv, sets out the evidence against beoutQ, and beIN said it will be regularly updated as legal actions against Saudi Arabia continue. The website includes materials on where beoutQ is apparently based, who is behind it, and sets out in detail all the commercial rights that have been stolen from organisations across the world of sport and entertainment since beoutQ first appeared.
The Premier League has been one of the sports bodies that has been majorly affected by beoutQ and in August joined forces with the French Football League (LFP) to escalate a complaint over the matter to the European Commission.
On the eve of the 2018-19 Premier League season, beIN Sports struck a three-season extension to its rights deal in the Middle East and North Africa region for the competition covering the 2019-20 to 2021-22 campaigns.
In its latest statement on the subject, the Premier League said it is aware of the new evidence presented by beIN, adding that it has already appointed legal counsel in Saudi Arabia to begin the process of bringing action against the parties involved in the piracy.
The League added: “We have also made representations through the Sports Rights Owner Coalition to the European Commission and made the UK Government aware of the issue.
“As the legitimate Premier League rights-holder across the Middle East and North Africa, we will continue to work with beIN Media Group to bring this highly-organised and sophisticated illegal broadcast piracy to an end.”
Read: BeIN fights back against beoutQ, and calls for rights-holder support