PARIS: British platform DAZN and Qatari channel beIN Sports have acquired the TV rights to French football’s top-flight Ligue 1 for at least the next two seasons, a source close to the negotiations told AFP on Sunday.
The financial commitment is reported to be close to 500 million euros ($544 million) annually for domestic broadcast rights, while international rights will fetch a further 160 million euros plus 40 million for the second-division Ligue 2.
There remain a number of details to hammer out before the agreement, which is due to run for the period 2024-2029, is made official — including an exit clause for DAZN and France’s Professional Football League (LFP) in two years’ time.
The division of matches between the sports streaming platform and the Qatari channel is also yet to be finalized, although DAZN is expected to broadcast eight of the nine matches in each round, while beIN would get the primetime game.
The larger picture of the agreement was validated by the chairmen of Ligue 1’s clubs during an LFP board meeting on Sunday.
“Despite an incredible amount of work by (LFP chair) Vincent Labrune and several other chairmen, including myself, we were at an impasse, given the urgency of the situation,” Jean-Pierre Caillot, chairman of Reims and chair of the Ligue 1 board, told AFP.
“We had to find the best solution for the clubs in terms of exposure and cash flow. Finding and securing this agreement with DAZN and beIN Sports is the solution that, after several hours of discussions, the Ligue 1 chairmen were virtually unanimously in favor of.
“It’s obviously not the result we’d imagined at the outset, but it means that the future is not compromised,” added Caillot.
The clubs will earn a total of 700 million euros per annum to share between themselves. However, that amount is a far cry from the initial one billion euros the LFP hoped to attract for domestic rights alone when the rights were put out to tender last autumn.
The 2024-25 Ligue 1 season will begin on August 16.
DAZN and beIN Sports acquire Ligue 1 TV rights
https://arab.news/bv2v7
DAZN and beIN Sports acquire Ligue 1 TV rights
- British DAZN and Qatari beIN reportedly paid approximately 700 million euros per year for both domestic and international TV rights
- Deal valid for next two seasons
Palestinian filmmaker says Israeli settlers assaulted him for winning Oscar
- Hamdan Ballal said he had been attacked by settlers while soldiers pointed their weapons at him
- No Other Land’s co-director called the “brutality” life-threatening
SUSYA, Palestinian Territories: Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal said Wednesday that he was attacked by Israeli settlers for winning the prestigious award, calling the “brutality” life-threatening.
Israeli police released Ballal on Tuesday after detaining him the day before for allegedly “hurling rocks” following what activists described as an attack by settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Ballal co-directed “No Other Land,” which won Best Documentary at this year’s Academy Awards.
The film chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta — an area Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.
Ballal said he had been attacked by settlers while soldiers pointed their weapons at him.
“I felt that these were the last moments of my life, that I would lose it due to the severity of the beating,” he told AFP in a video interview.
“My head was trapped between the settler’s foot, the door and the wall, as if it were a football.”
The “brutality” of the attack, he said, “made me feel it was because I won the Oscar.”
During his detention at an Israeli military center, Ballal noticed soldiers mentioning his name alongside the word “Oscar” during shift changes.
“While I couldn’t understand everything they said, I clearly recognized my name and the word ‘Oscar’, as those words don’t change in Hebrew,” he said.
According to the Israeli military, three Palestinians were apprehended on Monday for “hurling rocks” during a confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians in the southern West Bank village of Susya.
The village is located near Masafer Yatta, a grouping of hamlets south of Hebron city where “No Other Land” is set.
Yuval Abraham, who co-directed the documentary, criticized the US Academy for its silence over the issue.
“Sadly, the US Academy, which awarded us an Oscar three weeks ago, declined to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while he was beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers,” Abraham said on X.
“While Hamdan was clearly targeted for making No Other Land... he was also targeted for being Palestinian — like countless others every day who are disregarded.”
“This, it seems, gave the Academy an excuse to remain silent when a filmmaker they honored, living under Israeli occupation, needed them the most,” Abraham added.
Israel’s military said in a statement that “claims that the detainees were beaten during the night at an IDF detention facility were found to be entirely baseless.”
“IDF (military) forces facilitated medical treatment for the detainees... and throughout the night, the detainees remained in a military detention facility while handcuffed in accordance with operational protocol,” it said, adding they were released on bail after questioning.
Activists from the anti-occupation group Center for Jewish Nonviolence said they witnessed the violence in Susya.
Foreign activists regularly stay in Masafer Yatta’s communities to accompany Palestinians as they tend to their crops or shepherd their sheep, and document instances of settler violence.
Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — a separate Palestinian territory — there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
Turkish court frees AFP journalist held for covering protests: lawyer
- AFP chief executive and chairman Fabrice Fries had slammed imprisonment as “unacceptable.”
Istanbul: A Turkish court on Thursday freed AFP photographer Yasin Akgul who was detained for covering mass protests roiling the country, his lawyer said.
Akgul, 35, was one of seven Turkish journalists arrested this week after days of covering mass protests that erupted on March 19 when Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival — was arrested.
Akgul and his colleagues were arrested at their homes before dawn and charged with “taking part in illegal rallies and marches and failing to disperse despite warnings,” court documents showed.
Turkiye ranks 158 out of 180 countries listed in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index compiled by RSF.
AFP chief executive and chairman Fabrice Fries had slammed imprisonment as “unacceptable.”
Akgul, he stressed, was “not part of the protest” but only covering it as a journalist, and should be swiftly released.
BBC veteran Jeremy Bowen accuses Israel of intentionally blocking journalists from Gaza
- Lack of access for international media is part of Israel’s strategy to ‘obfuscate what’s going on,’ he says, ‘because they don’t want us to see it’
- Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, received the Fellowship Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism from the UK’s Society of Editors on Tuesday
DUBAI: The BBC’s international editor, Jeremy Bowen, has accused Israel of deliberately preventing journalists from entering Gaza in an attempt to “obfuscate what’s going on, and to inject this notion of doubt into information that comes out.”
Bowen was awarded the Fellowship Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at a Society of Editors conference in the UK on Tuesday.
During his acceptance speech, he said: “Why don’t they let us into Gaza? Because they don’t want us to see it. I think it’s really as simple as that.
“Israel took a bit of flak for that to start with but none now, certainly not with (US President Donald) Trump So, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”
He praised Palestinian journalists for the “fantastic work” they are doing but said that he and other international journalists also want to report from Gaza. He again alleged that the reason Israeli authorities will not allow the international media into Gaza is because “there’s stuff that they don’t want us to see.” This contrasts sharply with the situation at the start of the conflict, Bowen added.
“Beginning after those Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, they (the Israelis) took us into the border communities,” he said. “I was in Kfar Aza when there was still fighting going on inside it. They had only just started taking out the bodies of the dead Israelis. Why did they let us in there? Because they wanted us to see it.”
In the past 18 months, Bowen said he had been permitted to spend only half a day with the Israeli army inside Gaza. He described the conflict as the “bloodiest war” since “the foundation of the Israeli state of 1948.”
He said that “if the place could open up, people could go through, look at the records, count the graves, exhume the skeletons from under the rubble and then they’d get a better idea. But when the doors shut, these things become very, very difficult.”
It was not the first time Bowen has voiced concerns about the reporting restrictions. During a report from Tel Aviv in Jan. 2025, he said: “One reason I’m standing here and not in Gaza is because the Israelis don’t let international journalists like myself in there to report freely.”
Last year, he was among 55 international journalists who signed an open letter urging Israel and Egypt to provide “free and unfettered access to Gaza for all foreign media.”
They wrote: “We call on the government of Israel to openly state its permission for international journalists to operate in Gaza, and for the Egyptian authorities to allow international journalists access to the Rafah Crossing.
“It’s vital that local journalists’ safety is respected and that their efforts are bolstered by the journalism of members of the international media. The need for comprehensive, on-the-ground reporting of the conflict is imperative.”
Atlantic releases entire Signal chat showing Hegseth’s detailed attack plans against Houthis
- Magazine said it was now publishing details after the Trump administration confirmed it was genuine and denied any classified information had been included
WASHINGTON: The Atlantic magazine on Wednesday published what it said was the entire text of a chat group mistakenly shared with a journalist by top US national security officials laying out plans of an imminent attack on Yemen.
The stunning details, including the times of strikes and types of planes being used, were all laid out in screenshots of the chat, which the officials had conducted on a commercial Signal messaging app, rather than a secure government platform.
The magazine, which initially only published the broad outlines of the chat, said it was now publishing the details after the Trump administration confirmed it was genuine and repeatedly denied that any classified information had been included.
The scandal has rocked President Donald Trump’s administration, which for now is reacting defiantly — attacking The Atlantic and denying any wrongdoing.
National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes had said Monday the chain cited by The Atlantic appeared to be “authentic.”
However, Vice President JD Vance, who was on the Signal chat, said The Atlantic had “oversold” the story, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said “the entire story was another hoax.”
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz likewise insisted on X that the Signal chain revealed “no locations” and “NO WAR PLANS.”
However, the depth of detail in the now published chat will fuel a furious outcry from Democrats in Congress who are accusing the Trump officials of incompetence and putting US military operations in peril.
The House of Representatives was set to discuss the scandal in a hearing Wednesday.
The story first broke Monday when Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent information in the Signal chat about imminent strikes against the Houthi rebels on March 15.
For reasons unknown, Goldberg’s phone number had been added to the group, also including Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, among others.
Goldberg also revealed disparaging comments by the top US officials about European allies during their chat.
The Atlantic initially did not publish the precise details of the chat, saying it wanted to avoid revealing classified material and information that could endanger American troops.
But on Tuesday, Ratcliff and other officials involved in the chat played down the scandal, testifying before Congress that nothing critical had been shared or laws broken — and that nothing discussed was classified.
Trump himself brushed the breach off as a “glitch” and said there was “no classified information” involved.
The Atlantic said on Wednesday that it therefore asked the government whether in that case there would be any problem in publishing the rest of the material. It got no firm indications to the contrary.
The Atlantic said its full publication Wednesday included everything in the Signal chain other than one CIA name that the agency had asked not to be revealed.
The text discussion includes Hegseth laying out the weather conditions, times of attacks and types of aircraft being used.
The texting was done barely half an hour before the first US warplanes took off and two hours before the first target, described as “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be bombed.
The details are shockingly precise for the kind of operation that the public usually only learns about later — and in vaguer terms.
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package),” Hegseth writes at one stage.
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets).”
A short time later, Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz sent real-time intelligence on the aftermath of an attack, writing “Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID” and “amazing job.”
The Houthis, who have controlled much of Yemen for more than a decade, are part of the “axis of resistance” of pro-Iran groups staunchly opposed to Israel and the US.
The Trump administration has stepped up attacks on the group in response to constant Houthi attempts to sink and disrupt shipping through the strategic Red Sea.
Trump says would ‘love’ to defund US public broadcasters
- Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will review NPR and PBS funding this week
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would “love” to cut funding for the US public broadcasters NPR and PBS, which reportedly will be reviewed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency this week.
“I would love to do that,” Trump told journalists when asked if he would like to defund National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, saying the amount they receive is “very unfair.”
