Qatar's beIN Sports cuts service in Egypt amid contract dispute

BeIN Sports, a Qatar-based broadcaster that holds exclusive television rights to top sporting events such as Premier League soccer in the Middle East, said it had cut its service to Egypt on Tuesday amid a contract dispute with its service provider, Reuters reports.

The news is likely to jolt soccer-obsessed Egypt, the Middle East’s most populous country, which stands to lose access to a deep pool of content held by beIN that also includes LaLiga, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A as well as major international club and country competitions.

The service cut came after “lengthy negotiations” to agree commercial terms for a new contract with Cable Network Egypt (CNE), beIN said in a statement, without providing further detail of the terms.

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“As such we are unable to provide our services on CNE as of January 8th, 2019 until such time that CNE agrees reasonable terms,” the statement said.

CNE said in a statement that it was working to resolve the dispute with beIN “as soon as possible.”

The outage comes the same day that Egypt won the right to host the 2019 African Nations Cup final, edging out South Africa for the tournament after Cameroon was stripped of it last month over concerns at the slow pace of preparations.

BeIN is blocked in Saudi Arabia under a boycott imposed when the kingdom and its allies including Egypt severed diplomatic ties with Qatar in June 2017 saying it supported terrorism. Qatar denies those accusations.