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Mark Douglas has claimed that the hopes of the proposed £300m takeover of Newcastle United have “been raised” in his latest piece for The Chronicle, following the “big development” from Reuters about the use of beIN Sports in the Middle East.
The football journalist was reacting to an article from Reuters that claimed that beIN Sports was broadcasted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) on Monday after they and Qatar reconciled this month at the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit.
Is the KSA takeover of Newcastle over?
Yes
No
As per Reuters, it was unclear if the ban of beIN in the Kingdom had actually been lifted, but many restaurants and cafes in the capital Riyadh were using satellite dishes to show Premier League matches on their Qatari sports channel.
However, the beIN Media Group did provide a comment to say that nothing ‘has materially changed’ as far as they are aware at this stage and that their website is ‘still fully blocked’ in the KSA.
Nonetheless, Douglas has claimed that the hopes of the prospective deal between Mike Ashley and the KSA consortium have been ‘raised‘ as a result of the news, explaining that the beIN debacle is “clearly one of the biggest outstanding issues in the takeover saga“.
How could this affect the possibility of a Newcastle takeover?
If the KSA were to officially unban access to beIN for their residents, then it would be a step in the right direction in terms of trying to get the bid back on track.
The relationship between the Saudis and the top flight have been strained over the illegal streaming of matches from the EPL, and so to show the games legally would surely ease the tension between them.
As Douglas explains however, this lift on beIN is not confirmed or official, but it could be yet another “new twist“, hopefully in the right direction.
In other news, find out whose display in the loss to Arsenal has been slammed by Lee Ryder here!
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