Start, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, 2018

FOM accuses Saudi TV channel of illegally broadcasting F1

2018 F1 season

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Formula One Management says it is investigating a Saudi Arabian television channel for illegally broadcasting F1 material.

The sport’s commercial rights holder says it is investigating the action of BeoutQ. The channel has also been accused by the international football federation FIFA for illegally broadcasting live World Cup soccer matches.

“It has come to our attention that certain Formula 1 content from the 2018 FIA Formula One world championship has been illegally transmitted by the channel known as BeoutQ operating primarily
within the MENA [Middle East and North African] region,” said FOM in a statement.

“BeoutQ has not acquired any rights from Formula 1 to transmit coverage of the FIA Formula One world championship. Formula 1 takes intellectual property infringement of this nature extremely seriously, we are looking in to the issue and those that are involved and will take appropriate action.”

FOM’s broadcasting deals are a major source of revenue for the company. Earlier this week it announced a new deal with Finnish sports channel MTV to continue broadcasting F1 for the new three years. The deal includes F1, F2 and GP3 (which will become F3 next year).

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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13 comments on “FOM accuses Saudi TV channel of illegally broadcasting F1”

  1. I didn’t see something like this coming at all, LOL.

  2. Where is the channel sourcing the feed from, I wonder? Pirating it off another licensed channel? If so, wouldn’t that other channel be involved as well? I’d wager that the satellite feeds are encrypted, so it’s not just a matter of pointing their station’s dish at the right point in the sky, is it?

    1. Don’t tell me they’re taking the F1 TV Pro feed and are sending it onwards to their customers! :-)

      1. @phylyp Judging by the review F1 TV Pro got here recently, https://www.reddit.com/r/motorsportsstreams/ seems more likely

    2. @phylyp
      The controversial BoutQ has been running illegally for around a year now (since August 2017). It’s actually pirating the broadcasting of Bein Sport Qatar channel and deleting it’s logo and every advertising that has to do with Qatar. BoutQ actually means Be out Qatar and you can figure out that is actually part of the political conflict between the Qatar and Saudia Arabia/UAE clans. The channel is sourcing the feed from both Columbia and Cuba. They have recently issued a cheap receiver on which all their channels can be watched, however it has already been hacked itself and it’s now part of the very popular sharing/IP TV hacked channels available in north Africa (mainly Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco) for the price of 50£ a year.

      1. @tifoso1989 – ah, many thanks for that very useful context. LOL at the channel name wordplay!

        @davidnotcoulthard – see tifoso1989’s comment, it appears to be pirating a Qatari channel’s content.

  3. MENA

    well, that’s the first time I’ve heard of that term.

  4. Liberty wouldn’t have to worry if they licensed the broadcast to free to air. They may loss a little revenue initially but would pick up many more viewers, long term gain.

    1. @johnrkh, as noted earlier in this thread, it seems that this is more about a deliberate act of economic warfare against Qatar as part of the increasingly aggressive and militaristic attitude that Saudi Arabia has been adopting in recent years.

  5. FOM should sue the Internet lol. Its so easy to find free live streams of skysports coverage, illegally being uploaded in real time

  6. There is a political conflict between Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt on one side and Qatar on the other side. Bein Sports is the legitimate rights owner of many sports broadcasts in MENA, including F1. Bein is owned by Aljazera, a TV broadcasting network that Saudi Arabia and co want to stop. BeoutQ stands for be out Qatar, it takes the bein sports broadcast, place it’s logo on top of bein logo. What’s funny is when bein runs anti piracy banners in the bottom, BeoutQ runs its own anti piracy banner on top of it 😂.

  7. Actually Beoutq and Bein Sports are like brother and sister.
    Bein sports has the official rights of F1 coverage and Beoutq wants to take benefit from there rights.
    Thats why the logo and color of BeoutQ is almost same.

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