Hello and welcome to the TIFO football podcast. I'm Joe Devine and I'm joined by Seb Stafford Blore.

Hi Joe.

Seb and I were joined today by the magnificent Matt Slater, who's here to talk us through the current situation with Saudi Arabia, Qatar's B-In Sports, which is the Middle East North Africa broadcaster partner

for the Premier League, and of course Newcastle United as well, who will get to more towards

the end of the episode. Seb, what are the key questions that we're trying to understand today?

Well, it's complicated, Joe. Fundamentally, I suppose from a Premier League perspective,

we're trying to work out what the

consequences of this are on the prospective Newcastle takeover.

Matt does a really good job because there's an awful lot of, it's a very nebless topic,

and there's an awful lot of unanswered questions and questions that he can only speculate

around, but he's absolutely fascinating, and is as clear in my mind as this is ever going to be this topic now. So thank you to Matt for that. Absolutely. Yeah. Now listen, and also if you want to read Matt's work, you can get a 30-day free trial to join The Athletic by visiting theathletic.com forward slash TIFO. And I would highly encourage everyone who's listening to do so even just to read

Matt's work he's my favourite of the journalists that I work with and I think you'll understand why

after listening to today's episode so many synergies Seb yeah you kind of told Adam Crofton he was

your favourite too so I like Adam Crafton as well it's hard it depends who's here but I would say you know Matt today and most days Adam all of those other days without further ado though because this is too much ado I leave you in the the cool hands and the warm embrace of Mr. Matt Slater.

Okay, Matt Slater.

Riddle me this.

The Saudi Arabian government has permanently barred the Premier League's Qatar-based Middle East broadcast partner B-In from operating in the kingdom.

Bian was the rights holder with a 500 million-pound deal with the Premier League that runs until 2022. So currently it means that there is no legal way, as far as I'm aware, of watching the Premier League in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. What I want to ask you is what the justification

for that is, because the Saudi Arabians have sort of suggested that it's about practices

that restrict competition, but presumably that's the purpose of being a rightsholder to the

Premier League. So how does that add up? Well, I mean, that's a very good question. I mean,

does it add up? So the official reason that was been given by the general authority for competition

...