November 16 – France’s Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) has written to the Directorate General for Trade at the European Commission calling for support in investigating the piracy activities of Saudi-broadcast beoutQ and demanding the copyright theft is stopped.
The LFP is asking for pressure to be put on “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to act and shut down the pirate channel.” The Ligue1 Conforma season kicked off last weekend with six of the 10 games broadcast illegally on the pirate channel that is pre-dominantly aimed at Saudi Arabia and broadcast via the Riyadh-based Arabssat satellite provider.
The broadcast rights are owned by beIN Sport who also had all 10 English Premier League fixtures pirated last weekend..
Didier Quillot, LFP Executive Director General “The LFP continues to take all necessary action to defend its interests and the interests of its broadcasters. Last January we participated in the creation of the Association for the Protection of Sporting Programs (APPS) with the broadcasters, the professional leagues and the sports’ federal bodies. Pirate broadcasts attack directly at the economic heart of the sport and we must unite in our struggle against this practice.”
The LFP says it “is examining all legal options, recourse and remedies that are at its disposal”. The league has also written to Arabsat “to demand that they stop ‘beoutQ’ from using its satellites to broadcast stolen content.”
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