MADRID, 14 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
‘beIN Media Group’ has signed an agreement that extends its broadcasting rights for LaLiga and that will allow its main sports channel, beIN SPORTS, to continue being the home of Spanish football in 34 markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC) until the end of the 2027-2028 and 2026-2027 seasons, respectively, the club’s association announced on Tuesday.
‘beIN’ has had the rights to the Spanish league since 2003 in ‘MENA’ and since 2015 in ‘APAC’. Now, with the new campaign it will allow the domestic championship to continue being broadcast exclusively on ‘beIN SPORTS’ for 16 consecutive seasons in 23 ‘MENA’ markets. In addition, the network will continue to have the rights to the 380 matches of the League and will see its media rights agreement extended to bring back LALIGA to beIN in Australia and New Zealand.
“We are delighted to extend our contract with LaLiga with two significant multi-year agreements across 34 countries. As a long-term, committed partner of LaLiga, we are proud to help Spanish football grow around the world through our world-class broadcasts and significant, trusted investment,” said Yousef Al-Obaidly, CEO of beIN Media Group.
For the executive, “this important agreement is further proof of beIN’s considered and coherent strategy to drive growth as one of the world’s leading sports media and entertainment groups.”
For his part, Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, recalled that the organisation is always looking for “top-level partners to bring Spanish football to fans around the world.” “Our relationship with ‘beIN’ has been essential to ensure that people in the ‘MENA’ and ‘APAC’ regions can enjoy a unique competition like LaLiga to the fullest. We are sure that the coming seasons will be unrivalled for our fans in the region,” he stressed.
Starting on August 15, and with a full round of ten games expected to take place, some of the key storylines ahead of the start of the new season will focus on how quickly Real Madrid’s new superstar Kylian Mbappé adapts, whether FC Barcelona’s new German coach Hansi Flick can quickly influence his new club’s style of play, and whether Girona can continue to make progress after qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in the 93-year-old club’s history.
Among the 380 matches will be the two ‘Clásicos’ between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, key matches within an exclusive agreement that covers Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Australia and New Zealand. In addition, ‘beIN’ will also share the broadcasting rights of LaLiga in Iraq with the regional platform ‘1001’.
Similarly, and in order to combat the scourge of audiovisual fraud, LaLiga and ‘beIN’ have jointly undertaken initiatives such as legal actions in Morocco and Bahrain aimed at blocking illegal streaming websites in the former and dismantling an illegal ‘IPTV’ service in the latter. In addition, periodic administrative blocks have been carried out jointly with other rights holders in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Similarly, there is constant communication between both entities to report all cases in the ‘HORECA’ channel (hotels, restaurants and cafes) in Spain, where decoders with contracts from other countries are identified in order to proceed with their deactivation.
To this end, LaLiga and beIN’s anti-piracy teams are working closely together to share intelligence on common anti-piracy objectives, new copyright regulations and newly detected piracy trends, and are currently developing a joint project to combat those hosting services that do not process removal requests (bulletproof hosting).