Alkass Sports Channels () is a group of eleven

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

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, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

. Its official name is ''Al Dawri wal Kass'' (), since it was initially launched to broadcast domestic football in Qatar. The eleven channels of Alkass are numbered from one to eleven. Starting from 2013, five of its ten channels (Al-Kass 6/7/8/9/10) are encrypted with Qatari pay-tv network beIN Channels Network, which are specified to broadcasting matches of

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

and

AFC Cup The AFC Champions League Two (abbreviated as the ACL Two or ACL2) is an annual continental club football competition organised by the Asian Football Confederation. It is the second-tier competition of Asian club football, ranked below the AFC C ...

. Since January 2023, beIN Channels Network introduced 2 new encrypted channels (9/10).

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 The 2006 Asian Games (), officially known as the XV Asiad or 15th Asian Games (, and commonly known as Doha 2006 (), were an Asian multi-sport event held in Doha, Qatar, from December 1 to 15, 2006, with 424 events in 39 sports featured in the ga ...

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

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often called the World Cup, is an international association football competition among the senior List of men's national association football teams, men's national teams of the members of the FIFA, Fédération Internatio ...

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 c ...

and the

Arabian Gulf Cup The Arabian Gulf Cup (, ''Kaʾs al-Khalīj al-ʿArabī''), also referred to simply as the Gulf Cup, is a biennial association football competition governed by the Arab Gulf Cup Football Federation for its eight member nations. The history of ...

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

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the ...

. Al-Kass has now 11 sports channel, 5 of them are

FTA FTA may refer to: Arts and media * '' The Faery Tale Adventure'', a computer game * Festival TransAmériques, an annual dance and theater festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada * Free The Army tour, the F.T.A. Tour or F.T.A. Show, an American anti ...

and the other 6 channels are encrypted with the Qatari pay-tv beIN Channels Network.

Programming

Football

In September 2012, Alkass held the rights to broadcast the

Qatar Stars League The Qatar Stars League (; abbreviated as QSL), known as Ooredoo 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 promotion and relegation wi ...

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 The Alkass International Cup was an annual under-17 football tournament hosted in Doha, Qatar from 2012 to 2020. It brought together some of the best under-17 teams of clubs around the world. Format Played across 11 days typically in January an ...

. 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) program won the Best Host award. The channel also won two awards at the

PromaxBDA Awards The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy Awards (GEMA Awards; formerly known as the PromaxBDA Awards and the Promax Awards) are for entertainment marketing, promotion, and design by a company or individual that is broadcast, published, or release ...

held at New York in June 2008.AMEInfo

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.alkass.net 1996 establishments in Qatar Television channels and stations established in 1996 Arabic-language television Television networks in Qatar Sports mass media in West Asia Mass media in Doha