Canal+ warns of market distorting threat of Al Jazeera’s beIN

Pascale Paoli-Lebailly ©RapidTVNews | 06-06-2012


The launch in France of Al Jazeera’s sport channel beIN Sport 1, and the forthcoming kick off of beIN Sport 2 in July, will not impact upon Canal+’s number of subscribers, the pay-TV firm’s MD Rodolphe Belmer has claimed.

beIN channels will cover 16 different sports, with a focus on football, which has to date been a key part of the Canal+ proposition.

Speaking to French daily Libération, Belmer said that Canal+ will “continue to develop (sic) without being embarrassed by this new competitor on the TV rights market.”

However, the MD did admit that Canal+ did have some concerns on a longer term regarding the new rival as “potentially irrational” from an economic point of view.

“Qatar is first motivated by other goals than just TV economics, and first by its strategy of cultural influence,” Belmer suggested. “The only problem is that Canal+ is restrained by an economic rationale. To invest into programming, we need to make money. And the competition coming from a potentially economically irrational group will cause trouble in the long term.”

Belmer made a plea to regulators for rules to be set up to help Canal+ fight on equal terms with a competitor which has very aggressive international expansion plans.


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