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 Al Jazeera has bought out ART’s whole sports broadcast portfolio, including rights to the next two Fifa World Cups, in what is rumoured to be a $2.2 billion deal.
According to a source close to the deal, Al Jazeera approached ART, originally with a view to acquiring the Saudi group’s World Cup broadcast rights only. ART apparently refused to consider a sale of just the World Cup rights, prompting Al Jazeera to make an offer for ART’s entire sports portfolio.
And for $2 billion, who’s going to argue?
Along with the Fifa World Cup regional rights for 2010 and 2014, Al Jazeera will now take on the African Cup Of Nations from 2010 to 2016, as well as the Saudi Football Federation, which will also go out on ART until the end of the 2010-11 season.
“It’s a good time to sell, to be honest. The competition has changed with new, strong players coming into the pay-TV market. You have the recession, which is a globally difficult time economically for everybody,” said Nawaf Tamimi, head of PR at ART, quoted in The National, which put a possible value of $1 billion on the deal.
“And you have this content, the World Cup, which is very valuable, and a party who are interested to buy,” he added, with a possible hint of the interest from Al Jazeera.
There’ll now be a reshuffling of channels, with ART Sport 1-6 shutting down at the end of the year (ART Sport 7 will continue to show the Saudi league). ART will carry Al Jazeera Sport +1 to +8 on a “non-exclusive” basis, and will also offer packages with the World Cup, although the group has not decided on pricing for these, according to The National.
Al Jazeera now has a fairly killer set of football rights: in addition to its newly-acquired options, it also holds rights to Italian Serie A, Spain’s La Liga and the UEFA Champions League.
What are the odds that someone from Qatar is speaking to someone in Abu Dhabi about the English Premier League?
Or is it that there's a touch of rivalry with the newly-resurgent ADMC...
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