Qatari news channel Al Jazeera could be lining up an IPO, suggests the London Times. The logic is that while its Arabic and English news channels, and other services, have achieved a solid reputation amongst viewers, the advertising dollars are not flowing quite as fast as the station’s management (led by chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani and CEO Wadah Khanfar) would like.
Al Jazeera (in its Arabic form) launched in 1996 and was an instant
success in the Middle East, although just as quickly gained notoriety
in the “West” when it aired post-9/11 video tapes from Osama bin Laden.
Since then the channel has launched three sports channels, a children’s
channel, a politics and public interest channel (Mobasher) and a
documentary channel. There’s also been talk of an Urdu channel for
Pakistan, and other spin-off services.
Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, reportedly put $150m into the
pot to kick Al Jazeera off, and is rumoured to still be funding
anything between $30m-$50m annually more recently, although hard data
is impossible to find.
The Times reports that it is the cost of gaining soccer rights that’s
pushing Al Jazeera’s sports channels to seek more cash. Winning local
viewers is easy if you screen events like the Champions’ League, but
funding exclusive rights is expensive, especially when locally there
are three competing pay-TV platforms each eager to secure eyeballs.
This is not to suggest for an instant that Qatar or Al Jazeera is
seeking a bank’s charity. Far from it. Qatar has the highest GDP per
capita in the world (according to the IMF in 2006) with its wealth
flowing from some of the world’s richest natural gas fields. But a
flotation would monetise the investment to date, and permit further
investment in key assets for the broadcaster, whether in news, kids,
documentary or sports programming.
