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29 March 2024

Olympics for free? Why not in UAE

A man climbs on the Olympic rings near the basketball venue in the Olympic park on th eve before the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. (AP)

Published
By Joseph George

Want to watch Olympics in the UAE? You should either be a subscriber to Abu Dhabi Sports or beIN Sports. The two main services are the authorized broadcasters for Olympics.

The Summer Olympics is all set to start off in Rio de Janeiro. The live braodcast of the opening ceremony will be held on Saturday, August 6, at 3am UAE time.

The channels have already started running promos for the Olympics.

In India, both Doordarshan and Star Sports will be broadcasting the event. The event will only be shown on DD Sports and not on the main Doordarshan which is part of the e-vision package.

Meanwhile, the subscription fee for beIN packages has been increased. The fee for beIN Complete, a bouquet of 53 channels, has been hiked from Dh90 to Dh110.

Both UAE telecom operators are passing on the hike to customers. While Etisalat already implemented the new tariff starting July, du has started informing its subscribers about the fee hike that will become effective starting August 8.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority has made it mandatory for operators to notify customers at least 45 days in advance before introducing a service fee hike.

In its notification to customers both telecom operators have informed that the current package will automatically change to beIN Full or Complete package and that customers will be charged Dh110 instead of Dh77 (du) Dh78 (Etisalat).

New channels will be automatically added to the TV Box.

Du has also provided existing customers an option to cancel the plan without penalties provided they do it before September 7, 2016.

Etisalat, however, said that subscribers could opt to choose beIN Sports, a bouquet of 19 sports channels such as Al Kass - 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 and beIN Sports, 1 to 10 including a few HD channels for Dh90.

A list of Etisalat's beIN Complete package can be found here:

BeIN, meanwhile, has announced that it along with Scripps Networks Interactive will launch HGTV and Travel Channel. The former is being introduced for the fiirst time in the region.

Travel Channel will be made available on beIN network from August 01, 2016, while HGTV will launch on beIN from November 02, 2016.