JEDDAH, 9 June 2008 — The black market sale of prepaid satellite cards witnessed a massive surge across Jeddah on Saturday with the start of the UEFA Euro 2008 championship tournament.

In Saudi Arabia, the European league is only being screened on Al-Jazeera Sport channel, whose official local agent, Lingo, has sold out on prepaid satellite cards. The cards, which normally sell for SR135, are being sold on the black market for up to SR400.

“I have paid SR350 for the card on the black market,” said Saleh Al-Ghamdi, a Saudi who works in the private sector. “I have visited many Lingo outlets in Jeddah, but they’ve all sold out. Now I’m forced to look for the card on the black market,” he said.

Speaking to the press recently, the president of Al-Jazeera Sport said that the company would sue anyone who sells the card for more than SR135. Commenting on the current lack of cards, he said that the channel would make available an additional 200,000 cards in the next few days.

Al-Ghamdi, like many other European football enthusiasts, has been visiting black markets across Jeddah for the last few days. One of those is in the Sahari Market on Palestine Road where cards were being sold for around SR400.

Ali Farouq, a Jordanian resident, said that the card was difficult to find on the black market. After visiting the Sahari Market he was told that it was being sold at the satellite market on Hira Street.

“I drove all the way there to find a man who refused to sell the card for less than SR400,” Farouq said, adding that he ended up paying the amount because he couldn’t afford to watch the league in coffee shops.

Salman Ahmad, a Yemeni worker at a satellite shop, said that black market dealers bought the cards from Lingo a long time before the league began, as they knew there would be massive demand.

“I’m sure they had inside information that the amount of cards would not meet the demand, so they invested in buying cards from agents and waited for the right time to make a good profit,” he said.

In February, Al-Jazeera Sport won exclusive broadcast rights to UEFA Champions League matches across the Middle East and North Africa for a period of four years. The Doha-based channel beat off competition from ART, Orbit, Showtime and Abu Dhabi to secure the deal. ART held these rights in previous years.