Alkass Sports Channels ( ar, قنوات الكأس الرياضية) is a group of eight

sports channel Sports channels are television speciality channels (usually available exclusively through cable and satellite) broadcast sporting events, usually live, and when not broadcasting events, sports news and other related programming. The first sport ...

s that are broadcast

24/7 In commerce and industry, 24/7 or 24-7 service (usually pronounced "twenty-four seven") is service that is available at any time and usually, every day. An alternate orthography for the numerical part includes 24×7 (usually pronounced "twenty ...

from

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...

. Its official name is ''Al Dawri wal Kass'' ( ar, الدوري والكأس, lit=the league and the cup), since it was initially launched to broadcast domestic football in Qatar. The eight channels of Alkass are numbered from one to eight. Starting from 2013, four of its eight channels (Al-Kass 3/6/7/8) are encrypted with Qatari pay-tv network

beIN Channels Network beIN Channels Network (; stylized as beIN) is a pan-Arab direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster owned by beIN Media Group, which is based in Doha, Qatar. Technology beIN had launched 6 multi-function interactive decoder ...

, which are specified to broadcasting matches of

AFC Champions League The AFC Champions League (abbreviated as ACL) is an annual continental club football competition organised by the Asian Football Confederation, and contested by Asia's top-division football clubs. It is the most prestigious club competition ...

and

AFC Cup The AFC Cup is an annual continental club football competition organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Under its current rules, the competition is played primarily between clubs from nations that did not receive direct qualifying s ...

History

Alkass Sports Channels was launched in June 2006 as the second sports channel from Qatar after Al Jazeera Sports. In its first year, the channel won many viewers with its unmatched coverage of domestic sports, especially football. It also broadcast the

2006 Asian Games 6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number. In mathematics Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...

held in Doha. It now also covers matches involving the Arabian Gulf countries, notably

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...

qualifying matches, the

AFC Asian Cup The AFC Asian Cup is the primary association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), determining the continental champion of Asia. It is the second oldest cont ...

and the

Arabian Gulf Cup The Arabian Gulf Cup ( ar, كأس الخليج العربي, ''Kass Al-Khaleej Al-Arabi''), often referred to simply as the Gulf Cup, is a biennial football competition governed by the Arab Gulf Cup Football Federation for its eight member nat ...

. It has emerged as one of the most popular sport channels in

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...

. Al-Kass has now eight sports channel, four of them are FTA and the other four channels are encrypted with the Qatari pay-tv

Programming

Football

In September 2012, Alkass held the rights to broadcast the

Qatar Stars League The Qatar Stars League ( ar, دوري نجوم قطر), or the QSL, also called QNB Stars League for sponsorship reasons, is the top level football league in Qatar football league system. Contested by 12 teams, it operates on a system of promotio ...

in English.

Football broadcasters

Events

Besides broadcasting, the channel has held certain sporting events in its history. A notable event is the Alkass International Cup. It is an under-17 tournament in which the best teams in the world send their youth teams to Qatar to participate in the tournament. Both, Qatar's Aspire International, and Aspire Qatar participated. The main purpose of the tournament is to help develop youth systems worldwide. There are cash prizes for the winners.

Awards

The channel won the best Persian Gulf Sports Channel award in 2007. Khalid Jassim, the host of the ''Majlis'' (The Council) programme won the best host award. The channel also won two awards at the Promax BDA awards held at New York in June 2008.AMEInfo

References

{{Reflist, 33em

External links

Official website
1996 establishments in Qatar Television channels and stations established in 1996 Arabic-language television Television networks in Qatar Sports mass media in the Middle East Mass media in Doha