Sarigul akin to the machinations in the top division to WWE, a popular American wrestling franchise, where actions are often choreographed to elicit maximum reactions. “It’s fun,” Sarigul said. “You often go there for drama, not for football shows.”
“When something goes wrong,” he added, “you blame them.” But no one knows who ‘they’ are. “
For beIN, a network that has faced challenging situations in other markets, the experience in Turkey is confusing. She conducted an investigation into how anti-Fenerbache songs appeared on the shows and concluded it was human fault.
In what seemed a conciliatory gesture to Fenerbahce, two directly responsible staff members were then fired. But it turned out that the two employees were Fenerbahce fans, which forced the club to revive its allegations of harassment.
As a result, beIN is considering leaving the fight and the league. The network, funded by the Qatari state, has always absorbed losses from its real business, but in recent years has withdrawn from several of them and reduced its staff in the middle a protracted and costly pirate dispute. He made arrangements with the top leagues in Germany i Italy until expiration and recently gave up one with Formula 1.
The Turkish dispute has taken its toll on beIN executives. Some of the non-Turkish staff from the network have been rotated from the country, and at least one new one, Rashed al-Marri, was brought in from Doha to take responsibility for operations in Turkey, and in particular for managing relations with Fenerbahce. But nothing seems to lower the temperature.
In late February, the company went to court to prevent Fenerbahce from continuing Sunday’s campaign that directed the broadcaster to its stadium and social media channels using the colors of the beIN logo, but replacing the words with the slogan “beFAIR”.
The result was that Turkish subscribers to BEIN matches were presented with a multitude of protest signs, side electronic billboards, and even the Fenerbahce players themselves covered with slogans marked beFAIR.
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