Saudi Arabia looking to get rights to German football league

The Financial Times said that Saudi Arabia is close to obtaining TV rights for the German Bundesliga, football league, in the latest step taken by the kingdom in search of new investments in the international sports industry.

The newspaper reported that the board has been negotiating with Qatar’s BeIN Sports network to renew an agreement worth $250 million to obtain the league’s broadcast rights across the Middle East, which expires at the end of this season.

The newspaper quoted two informed sources as saying that a representative on behalf of Saudi Arabia contacted the Bundesliga Board recently to obtain the TV rights in the Middle East in the place of the Qatari channel.

beIN, has a deal worth $617 million with 20 English clubs in the top tier, making it English football’s biggest overseas broadcast partner. It has claimed that Saudi was behind a pirate Arabic-language television network, beoutQ. The network was accused of illegally screening Premier League football matches across the Middle East and North Africa.

It is now three years since Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, imposed a blockade on Qatar, claiming that it supports terrorism, a charge strongly rejected by Doha.

READ: WTO tells Saudi to obey global rules in Qatar broadcast dispute