Al Jazeera has revealed the exact location of the headquarters of beoutQ, the Saudi pirate outfit, that has been stealing the signals of Qatar’s beIN Sports.
The channels’s investigative programme, What lies beneath, aired an episode that showed how two Saudi service providers, Selevision and Shammas, were involved in operations carried out by beoutQ. The investigation revealed that beoutQ is based out of the headquarters of a media company in the al-Qirawan district of the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia has previously denied claims that beoutQ is based in the kingdom.
The 10-channel piracy entity began broadcasting on the Arabsat satellite operator after a diplomatic dispute prompted Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt to impose a land, sea, and air blockade against Qatar in the summer of 2017.
Shortly after the blockade was enforced, all of the beIN Sports channels were banned in the blockading nations, and their equipment was confiscated in Saudi Arabia. This coincided with the Saudi authorities promoting the launch of a new sports media group.
The programme showed a leaked video from inside the secret headquarters of beoutQ, which also revealed details about the people associated with it. The video showed the equipment, transmitters and receivers used in the acts of piracy.
The footage also included images of the main control room and servers that regulate and distribute beoutQ’s stolen content from the beIN Sports channel.
Earlier this month, an investigative report into the operations of bouts showed that Arabsat had been carrying the illegal bout channels, but the satellite operator has now ceased distribution.
