Rapid TV News reports that Arab Radio & Television and Al Jazeera Sports have signed a preliminary agreement in Doha recently, whereby ART would transfer the rights and exclusive content of six sports channels to Al Jazeera Sport.

Al Jazeera sports division currently holds rights of major football leagues and is expected to become the exclusive regional rights-holder of next year’s World Cup in South Africa.

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The Al Jazeera Sport satellite channel last week broke a long established taboo by broadcasting a football match featuring an Israeli team on Arab television for the first time. The UEFA Champions League match between Israeli champions Maccabi Haifa and Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich was aired on the Qatar-based channel with English commentary.

Al Jazeera has obtained rights to televise Champions League matches in Arabic-speaking countries. Until last year Saudi-owned ART held the rights to broadcast Europe's premier club football competition but ART never aired a game involving an Israeli team.

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Al Jazeera Sports has won exclusive broadcast rights to UEFA Champions League matches across the Middle East and North Africa for a period of four years, dealing a blow to ART who held these rights in previous years.

The Doha-based channel beat off competition from ART, Orbit, Showtime and Abu Dhabi to secure the deal. The bid figure was not revealed.

The agreement includes rights to the quarter, semi and final UEFA Cup matches, the UEFA Super Cup and Internet and mobile rights. Live broadcast of the Champions League and the UEFA Cup will run from 2009 to 2012. The channel is expected to sub-licence live matches to a number of free-to-air broadcasters across the region.

“This is a major development for us. Right now, we have about one million subscribers. We are looking at a figure of three million subscribers in the next two years”, said General manager of Al Jazeera Sport Ayman Jadah. The channel is working on providing English commentary during matches, Jadah added.