beIN Media Group: interest from Saudi Arabian and US firms to invest in the group (press)

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and several US private equity firms have expressed interest in investing in Qatari pay-TV group beIN Media Group, which is currently considering "a number of strategic options" including an initial public offering, according to information reported by the US financial news website Bloomberg on 14/10/2022.

BeIN Media Group's pay-TV channels were banned from broadcasting in Saudi Arabia for more than four years between June 2017 and the end of 2021. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had announced the severing of their commercial and diplomatic relations with Qatar on 05/06/2017.

BeIN Media Group then filed a $1bn (€1.026m) arbitration case against Saudi Arabia "for being illegally excluded from the Saudi market and having been made the the object of what could be described as the most important piracy in the history of the sports broadcasting industry" (illegal broadcasting, on Saudi Arabia's pirate channel beoutQ, of competitions for which beIN held the exclusive TV rights), on 01/10/2018. Saudi Arabia lifted the ban…