Ever since the illegal siege of Qatar began almost a year ago, a Saudi-based organisation had been stealing the TV signal of Doha-based channel beIN Sports and marketing it as pirate channel ‘beout Q.’

A lot of efforts had been going on to bring the troublemakers to justice and it seems the efforts have paid off. It has recently been noticed that the Saudi pirate channel  has gone into a phase of silence, reported Qatar Tribune.

This coincides with Advisor to the Saudi Royal court Saud Al Qahtani, who was previously promoting such a channel, now apparently calling for combating piracy.
A few months ago, Al Qahtani had said Saudis would watch all FIFA World Cup matches for free or at a nominal price and confirmed on his Twitter account that he had a clear plan to break the monopoly of beIN Sports.

But now, he appears to stress the need to stop piracy and protect the rights of beIN Sports, a matter which shows another retreat that has become a prominent feature of the recent Saudi political stands.

At the same time, Okaz, a Saudi daily, said a Saudi crackdown on piracy had led to the seizure of 5,000 receivers.

Earlier, prominent sports institutions had called on Saudi authorities to immediately close the pirate channel ‘beout Q.’ The alliance included 10 sports institutions including FIFA, English Premier League, UEFA, Spanish La Liga, France Ligue, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and beIN Sports.

FIFA Chief Commercial Officer Philippe Le Floc'h said the global football governing body deals with intellectual property rights violations seriously and works to curb such violations.

The Director of broadcasting at the Premier League, Paul Molnar, said, “Any piracy of this property isn’t acceptable and we’ll stand against it,” he said.

Meanwhile, beIN Sports has contracted with a private company to combat broadcast piracy through the use of advanced electronic technology ASiD, which provides robust content protection.