The top sanctioning and governing bodies in tennis have joined forces to “publicly condemn and call for the immediate closure” of BeoutQ, a pirate service based in Saudi Arabia.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club, French Tennis Federation, Tennis Australia and the United States Tennis Association, which all operate the sport’s four grand slams, were included in a joint statement to call for the action by the International Tennis Federation, ATP World Tour and Women’s Tennis Association.
Formula One, football’s European and global governing bodies Uefa and Fifa, and a string of broadcasters including beIN Media Group, Telemundo and NBCUniversal, have already complained about BeoutQ.
BeIN Media Group is the exclusive rights-holder in the Middle East and North Africa for major tennis tournaments, but the coalition of tennis bodies said that over the past year, “a whole variety of world tennis content has been illegally broadcast across the MENA region by… beoutQ”.
The group added: “Over the past 12 months beoutQ has been brazenly stealing the broadcast feeds of international tennis tournaments and distributing them illegally on a satellite provider called Arabsat… The case of beoutQ is especially troubling due to the unparalleled sophistication and the extensive period of time over which the commercial-scale theft has been allowed to continue.”