by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Company Stories, Qatar Media & Sports
⚡ TL;DRQatar’s investment in sport is described by supporters as legitimate soft power and economic diversification, and by critics as sportswashing intended to deflect scrutiny from human rights conditions. Both descriptions are used to characterise the...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Company Stories, Qatar Media & Sports
⚡ TL;DRQatar’s 2022 World Cup is routinely described as a two-hundred-billion-dollar tournament, which is misleading: the great majority of that figure was national infrastructure — a metro system, a new city, an airport, roads — that Qatar had...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Company Stories, Qatar Media & Sports
⚡ TL;DRQatar Sports Investments bought Paris Saint-Germain in 2011 for a sum in the tens of millions and, after more than a decade of heavy spending, sold a minority stake at a valuation in the billions. As a financial trade it worked. As an operating business,...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Company Stories, Qatar Media & Sports
⚡ TL;DRbeIN Media Group buys exclusive sports broadcast rights across the Middle East, France, Turkey and other markets, and sells subscriptions. The model works only if exclusivity is enforceable, which is why an industrial-scale piracy operation targeting its...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Company Stories, Qatar Media & Sports
⚡ TL;DRAl Jazeera launched in 1996 and broke the monopoly Arab governments held over broadcast news in their own countries. It is state-funded, has never been commercially self-sustaining, and is simultaneously one of the most influential and most contested news...
