Angry football fans show red card to beIN Sports

Italian Serie A top-tier football was suspended in March because of the pandemic and resumed in June. (AFP)

• Subscriptions canceled, refunds demanded after Qatari broadcaster suddenly stops showing top-tier Italian league

CAIRO: Angry football fans have demanded refunds and canceled their beIN Sports subscriptions after the Qatari broadcaster suddenly stopped showing matches from Serie A, Italy’s top-tier league.
Online fan groups for big Italian clubs such as Internazionale, Lazio, Milan and Juventus have been inundated with complaints.
“I feel like beIN stole my money,” Tarek, a Milan fan in Egypt, told Arab News. “I renewed my subscription at the beginning of June when the new calendar of Serie A was announced, and I was not notified by beIN that they would stop airing it.
“As a result I missed my team’s win against Lecce and I am very frustrated and disappointed.”
Serie A was suspended in early March because of the coronavirus pandemic. It resumed in mid June, with 12 rounds of 10 matches remaining to be completed. BeIN Sports, which is thought to be in financial difficulty, is believed to have demanded compensation for disruption to its schedules, and been rebuffed.
The company said it had suspended Serie A broadcasts “for legal reasons,” but fans bombarded the beIN website with complaints that the explanation was inadequate.
“I’ve been a customer of yours for several years but I am canceling my subscription, I feel disgusted with your poor service,” Mohammad from Syria wrote.
The Juventus FC fan group on Twitter said: “We demand that beIN explain the Serie A broadcasting issue. We subscribed to watch Serie A, and we demand compensation.”
Lazio4arab, another prominent fan group with thousands of followers, posted: “You pay money to watch your favorite championship, they take your money and yet you are not allowed to watch what you love. Who can compensate the viewers?”