Al Jazeera targets Spain amid dropping viewer numbers in its heartland

By James M. Dorsey

State-owned Qatari television network Al Jazeera is exploring the acquisition of Spain’s La Liga premier soccer league rights in a bid to expand its budding global sports franchise, tweak its business model in a world in which pan-Arab television is on the decline and compensate for mounting criticism of its coverage of popular revolts in the Middle East and North Africa.

Al Jazeera’s renewed interest in Spanish rights comes as financially troubled Spain’s two major sports broadcasters, Mediapro and Canal Plus, which is owned by Grupo Prisa, are struggling under a mountain of debt. It also follows a breakdown in talks with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, according to Spanish news website El Confidencial Digital.

Grupo Prisa with debts estimated at €3 billion and Mediapro with liabilities of €300 million hinted last year that they would not bid at current rates for the Spanish league rights when the broadcast contract expires in 2016.

Al Jazeera’s interest in the Spanish rights reaffirms its strategy of moving in behind other Qatar government institutions as they conclude sponsorship agreements and acquisitions such as the winning of the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup, Qatar Foundation and Qatar Airways’ sponsorship of FC Barcelona, and the television network’s acquisition of French broadcasting rights in the wake of the Gulf state’s takeover of Paris St. Germain.

It also fits Al Jazeera’s move into markets such as Egypt in anticipation that they will generate revenue at a later stage rather than immediately and Qatar’s strategy of employing sports and media to leverage its global influence. Al Jazeera last year launched BelN Sports USA and early this year purchased former US vice president Al Gore’s Current TV to ease the network’s penetration of the North and Latin American markets.

Al Jazeera’s emphasis on sports as well as its acquisition of local broadcasters such as Mubasher in Egypt reflects changes in Middle Eastern and North African broadcasting. Al Jazeera’s launch in 1996 revolutionized the region’s news broadcasting that until then was dominated by state-run broadcasters who towed the official line with its free-wheeling coverage and debate of sensitive issues and willingness to offend governments. As a result, it spawned the launch of a huge number of satellite television stations eager to grab a piece of the pie and make their mark.

It’s a strategy that has paid off. More than anything else, Al Jazeera and the 2022 World Cup have put Qatar, a tiny city state, on the world map, allowing it to project soft power and engage in public diplomacy.

Nevertheless, Al Jazeera, which experienced a boom as the primary news source in the heyday of the Arab revolts that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen, has seen its viewership numbers decline recently with Arabs turning increasingly to local news broadcasters and a growing perception that Al Jazeera is in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in line with Qatar’s support for them in various post-revolt countries as well as in Syria.

Market research company Sigma Conseil reported recently that Al Jazeera’s market share in Tunisia had dropped from 10.7 in 2011 to 4.8% in 2012 and that the Qatari network was no longer among Egypt’s 10 most watched channels. Tunisia’s 3C Institute of Marketing, Media and Opinion Studies said that Al Jazeera Sports was the only brand of the network that ranked in January among the country’s five most watched channels.

Al Jazeera reporters are reportedly increasingly harassed as they seek to do their jobs in Tunisia. Protests that erupted after this year’s assassination of prominent opposition leader Shukri Belaid charged that “Al Jazeera is a slave of Qatar,” accusing it of biased reporting on the murder because of the Gulf state’s support for Ennahada, the country’s dominant Islamist grouping.

Complicating Al Jazeera’s potential push into Spain is the fact that Spanish law requires one match a week to be aired on a free-to-air rather than a pay tv channel as well as the fact that each Spanish club sells its own rights which strengthens the negotiating position of teams like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

Prisa Grupo currently owns the broadcasting rights of Atletico Madrid, Celta de Vigo, RCD Espanyol, Getafe, Osasuna, Real Sociedad, Real Zaragoza, Athletic Bilbao and Real Betis while Mediapro’s franchise includes Real Madrid FC and FC Barcelona. El Confidencial Digital reported that Al Jazeera was likely to revolutionize the $600 million Spanish soccer broadcast market by acquiring La Liga’s rights as a package with Mediapro acting as its broadcast sub-contractor despite Madrid and Barcelona’s opposition.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, visiting scholar at the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Sport Science, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Clash of Spanish soccer giants produces Palestinian victory

A Palestinian youth touts a Barcelona shirt (Source: Getty Images)

By James M. Dorsey

When Spanish giants Real Madrid and FC Barcelona clashed this weekend, two matches separated by thousands of kilometers were played, one on and one off the pitch. The Spanish clash ended in a draw in Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium; a rare show of public defiance to Gaza’s Hamas rulers ended with a victory for what amounted to Palestinians rejecting the Islamists’ call for a boycott of the popular Catalan champion.

The Spanish derby turned into an inter-Palestinian clash of wills as well as a rejection of the Palestinian struggle for statehood against Israel becoming the determining factor of their daily lives when Barcelona extended an invitation to Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit to attend the match.

Mr. Shalit was exchanged last year after five years in Hamas captivity in a prisoner exchange swap in which Israel’s released more than a 1,000 Palestinians to Hamas in a deal that boosted the Islamists’ fortunes at the expense of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s authority on the West Bank.

That victory has now turned into an own goal with Palestinian soccer officials rejecting a call by Hamas to boycott the match and scores of Palestinians in Gaza publicly defying a Hamas order not to watch the match on television.

Hamas’s setback comes as the group, which wrenched control of the Gaza Strip from Mr. Abbas’s Al Fatah movement in 2007 and split the Palestinian national movement, is on the defensive. A Hamas decision to boycott this month’s municipal elections on the West Bank, has all but paved the way for a Fatah victory. A Human Rights Watch report last week accused Hamas of subjecting Palestinians to serious abuses of justice, including torture, arbitrary arrest and unfair trials. Hamas has denied the allegations.

Hamas is also facing increased charges of widespread corruption, fraud and extortion, making it difficult for the movement to capitalize on protests in the West Bank against and discontent with the economic policies of Mr. Abbas’s government.

Hamas’s boycott of Barcelona targeted what is perhaps the most popular European club in Gaza as well as the West Bank, boosted by recent reports that Catalonia may seek independence from crisis-ridden Spain. 

"We can identify with the Catalans and their struggle against the great power of Madrid, like the way we struggle against Israel," the BBC quoted a Palestinian soccer fan as saying.

Writing on the BBC’s website, Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison said that “Barcelona Football Club arguably brings more joy to Palestinians than any other institution in the world. That's certainly my impression after almost three years in Gaza and the West Bank. Every time the Catalans take to the field you can guarantee you'll struggle to get a table in the bars of Ramallah and the shisha-infused coffee shops of Gaza City. On match day tradesmen touting maroon and gold Barca jerseys set up shop at Qalandia, the traffic-infested Israeli military checkpoint that separates Ramallah from East Jerusalem.”

The Hamas boycott was sparked, according to Barcelona, when it acceded to an Israeli request to allow Mr. Shalit, an avid soccer fan, to attend this weekend’s derby. The club soon realized that nothing in the Middle East is shielded from politics.

To squash protests at an early stage, Barcelona quickly extended invitations to three Palestinians: Palestinian Football Association president and Al Fatah member Jibril Rajoub, Mr. Abbas’s ambassador to Spain, Musa Amer Odeh, and popular national team soccer player Mahmoud Sarsak who was released from three years in Israeli prison earlier this year under pressure from world soccer body FIFA and Europe’s governing football group UEFA after he went on a three-month hunger strike. Mr. Sarsak was never charged with an offense but was suspected to be a member of the militant, Gaza-based group, Islamic Jihad.

Messrs Rajoub and Abu Odeh appear despite mounting disillusion with Al Fatah to have been more in tune with the popular mood when they announced that they would accept Barcelona’s invitation and not join the Hamas boycott. Mr. Sarsak by contrast said that he would "refuse to sit in the same place with a killer who came on a military tank. I respect Barcelona's invitation, but I have to avoid angering the Palestinian people and their supporters as well as all those who supported me during my hunger strike." Mr. Sarsak acknowledged however that many Palestinians felt he should have accepted the Barcelona invitation to highlight Palestinian suffering and turn the clash between the Spanish giants into an Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.

To be sure, Mr. Sarsak may have been in a no-win situation. His attendance of the Spanish derby alongside Mr. Shalit could well have sparked Palestinian criticism. By the same token, his boycott in line with Hamas and Islamic Jihad policy certainly failed to strike a popular cord with Palestinians.

A small group of former prisoners wearing Barcelona and Real Madrid shirts kicked a soccer ball around on a forlorn Gaza field in protest against Mr. Shalit’s attendance of the derby. "Soccer is a sport that carries the message of freedom and love but we are against it when a soldier is invited, because it equates between the victim and the aggressor," said Yasser Saleh, who spent 17 years in Israeli jails.

Nonetheless, Hamas’s boycott call offered Palestinians a rare opportunity to vote with their feet against continued entrenched, feuding Palestinian groups that have proven unable to further national aspirations or improve economic conditions. The Palestinian show of defiance came against the backdrop of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process virtually that is dead, the faltering of revived Palestinian efforts to gain some form of recognition of statehood at last month’s United Nations general assembly in New York, and widespread economic discontent in both the West Bank and Gaza.

"I watch football and support Barcelona, because I see only sports, I don't see politics - I won't allow for Israel to deny us from this fun time,” said defiant Palestinian Barcelona fan Nasser Ziad.

In a strip where children wear imitation Barcelona blue-and-red jerseys and Barcelona victories spark wild cheering and car honking, coffee shops were filled on Sunday to the rim as Palestinians ignored the Hamas boycott and gathered to watch their favorite team play on large television screens. “We shouldn’t stay at home. We should be out their cheering our team and waving the Palestinian flag for all to see,” said one defiant Barcelona fan.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.