The supporters of Newcastle football club certainly do not believe their eyes. The lawn of their favorite team, which until the emergence of the coronavirus hosted Premier League games, the elite of the English round ball, has been the field of a completely unexpected confrontation for a week: between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The desire of the crown prince of Riyadh, the very turbulent Mohamed Ben Salman, to get their hands on the team in the white and black jersey imported the great quarrel of the Gulf on the banks of the Tyne, the river which crosses Newcastle, metropolis of north -is from the UK.
Qatar, which Saudi Arabia and its allies have embargoed for almost three years, in retaliation for refusing to break away from Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, has protested the prospect of such an acquisition.
Since the summer of 2017, not satisfied with having broken off its diplomatic and commercial relations with the small gas emirate, closed its airspace to Qatar Airways planes and sealed off its land border with the peninsula, the Saudi monarchy has also launched in the piracy of BeIN Sports, the Qatari audiovisual empire.
A ghost channel, named beoutQ, has hijacked all of the channel’s programs, which own the rights to the world's most prestigious sporting competitions, including the Premier League. An operation on an unprecedented scale, which numerous investigations, including a recent European Union report, have attributed to the Saudi kingdom.
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A buyout subject to an evaluation procedure
However, the leaders of the Premier League must give their blessing to the takeover of Newcastle by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Saudi sovereign fund. A British company, NCUK Investment Limited, was created, with; at its head, Yasser Al-Rumayyan, the director of the PIF, who serves as an armed wing in the economic diversification policy of Mohamed Ben Salman.
According to the British press, the only thing left is the green light from Richard Masters, the boss of the Premier League. The latter must submit any candidate for taking over a club to the "directors and owners test", an evaluation procedure based on criteria of financial reliability and probity.
This clause prompted Yousef Al-Obaidly, the president of BeIN Media Group, the parent company of BeIN Sports, owned by the Qatari sovereign fund, to question Richard Masters and all the owners of Premier League clubs, in tacit hope to torpedo the deal.
"The illegal beoutQ service has caused enormous commercial damage to BeIN Sports and potentially irreparable damage to the value of Premier League broadcast rights, your most important commercial asset", the Qatari channel boss is moved in a letter sent to his Premier League counterpart.
“Protect revenues from retransmission rights”
The majority of the 380 matches of the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 seasons of the English championship were broadcast live, mainly in the Arab world, on beoutQ channels, via the satellite operator Arabsat, of which Saudi Arabia is the main shareholder – and without the owners of this pirate television paying a single penny.
The German, French and Spanish football championships, the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the Wimbledon and Roland-Garros tournaments, the American basketball championship and dozens of other renowned events have suffered the same fate.
Probably under pressure from owners of broadcast rights, such as FIFA or UEFA, who have complained to Riyadh on numerous occasions, the broadcast of beoutQ on Arabsat stopped some time ago.
But the programs of BeIN Sports and hundreds of other channels, such as Canal +, Sky Sports and even Netflix, remain accessible via streaming, via beoutQ decoders distributed across the Middle East.
"All of this takes place at a time when football clubs most need to protect their revenues from broadcast rights", said Yousef Al-Obaidly in his letter to club bosses, referring to the fact that the coronavirus epidemic has interrupted the English championship.
Concerns about the 2022 World Cup
But the scuffle over Newcastle goes far beyond the dispute over BeIN Sports. This case is indicative of Saudi Arabia’s desire to assert itself on the world of football, like its Emirati and Qatari neighbors, who each own a major European club, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. An ambition that is currently frustrated.
UEFA has opposed plans by FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to create a club world cup expanded to 21 teams with support from the Japanese conglomerate Softbank, which is linked to Arabia.
The Battle of Newcastle is also a testament to the fear that Saudi Arabian football has created in Qatar. It is feared in Doha that the Saudi dolphin, Mohamed Ben Salman, will use his proximity to Mr. Infantino to push for a reallocation of the 2022 World Cup.
The conditions under which the emirate managed to organize this test have never ceased to be controversial. On April 15, the United States' justice department accused FIFA officials of receiving bribes to vote for Qatar for the first time in the December 2010 attribution vote.
Infantino's plans at the start of 2019 to expand the format of the Qatari World Cup from 32 to 48 teams had also raised alarms in the emirate. This idea, apparently supported by Saudi Arabia, could have forced Qatar to share the organization of the tournament with its neighbors in the Gulf, or even to transfer it to another country. The project was finally abandoned by FIFA in May 2019, much to the relief of Doha.
