Qatar Broadcaster Reviews $500 Million Italian Soccer Deal

(Bloomberg) -- Plans for a soccer match between Turin’s Juventus and Rome’s Lazio in Saudi Arabia next month have sparked a financial threat from a Qatari broadcaster, one of the Italian league’s main partners, which says the event endorses a country that has been pirating its premium sports broadcasts since before the last World Cup.

Over the past year, Qatar’s BeIN Media has been pressing Italy’s elite soccer league, Serie A, to scrap the matches in Saudi, with whom the league has a $22.5 million contract for three games over five seasons. The first match was held last January.

BeIN now says it will reconsider all its financial agreements with Italian soccer, worth around $500 million over a three-year cycle. The Qatari broadcaster accounts for some 55% of Serie A revenue from overseas rights -- bought via the league’s sports rights agency IMG -- with contracts to show matches in the Middle East, Asia and parts of Europe. The President of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, Yasser Almisehal, said the government had no involvement in any piracy.

“BeIN is actively reconsidering its entire commercial relationship with Serie A following the league’s decision to go ahead with its Super Cup match next month in Saudi Arabia,” a spokesman said. “It is remarkable what Serie A is seemingly prepared to jeopardize -- not only all the financial revenues from one of its biggest broadcaster partners, but also the exposure BeIN gives to the league in markets all around the world.”

Honoring Contract

Luigi de Siervo, who heads Serie A, said in a statement to Bloomberg that the match would go ahead as planned.

“When I was elected as Lega Serie A CEO in February 2019, I found a multi-year agreement to play the next Italian Super Cup finals in Saudi Arabia,” he said. The league “could not fail to honor the contract,” as the piracy has been curtailed, de Siervo said -- a point that BeIN contests.

He added that the league considers BeIN strategic for its distribution, and that the contract with the broadcaster didn’t limit Serie A from playing matches in Middle Eastern countries.

The conflict over sports rights dates to the economic boycott on Qatar imposed in 2017 by Saudi Arabia and several neighbors, who accused the country of supporting terrorism, which it denies. One consequence was that residents of the kingdom could no longer view premium international sporting events -- most of which are carried by BeIN -- except through pirated broadcasts.

Formula One

BeIN has carried through on threats about contracts before. In February, the broadcaster decided not to renew a deal with Formula One, worth $30 million to $40 million a year, people with knowledge of the matter said at the time. That follows BeIN’s warning last November that it would cut spending with rights holders globally unless they did more to stop the Saudi-based broadcaster BeoutQ from pirating its content.

Italy’s league is the fourth largest in Europe, trailing well behind England’s Premier League, Germany’s Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga, according to Deloitte’s Sports Business Group’s 2019 review of Football Finance. None of Italy’s teams made the firm’s top 10 ranking by revenue, with Juventus at No. 11, its lowest position since the 2011-2012 season. Even so, shares of the popular club have climbed about 24% this year.

Juventus declined to comment on matters involving BeIN and the match in Saudi Arabia.

Spanish Tournament

A January tournament in Saudi Arabia involving four Spanish teams, including Barcelona and Real Madrid, has also come in for criticism from the Qataris. Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, which isn’t organizing the tournament, said last week he doesn’t view this as a good time to visit Saudi Arabia given the piracy of European football matches.

Yousef Al-Obaidly, the CEO of BeIN Media, speaking at recent conference in London, criticized Serie A and the Spanish Football Federation for holding their Super Cup games in “the very country that has been stealing the commercial rights of all their broadcast partners for over two years, destroying the value of the Italian and Spanish game in the process.”

In July, Serie A joined the Bundesliga, the Premier League, FIFA, and La Liga, among others, in condemning the piracy of BeoutQ, and called on the authorities in Saudi Arabia to support them in ending the breaches of intellectual property rights taking place in the country.

Meantime, Almisehal of Saudi Arabia’s football federation said “everyone is enthusiastic about the game” between the two Italian clubs and that he expected it would sell out within days.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Hellier in London at dhellier@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Aaron Kirchfeld at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net, Frank Connelly, Jennifer Ryan

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