ART was founded on October 15, 1993 by Saleh Abdullah Kamel, a Saudi businessman and is a private company specializing in family entertainment, including movies, music and sport.[1]
ART was particularly known in Saudi Arabia for its exclusive sports event broadcasts, especially the Saudi Leagues. The network lost a significant amount of its audience share after the launch of many similar free-to-air channels like the Rotana network, owned by Al-Waleed bin Talal. At the time of launch, ART produced over 6,000 live and recorded shows per year, including family-oriented dramas, series, plays, sports programs, music videos and documentaries.
ART is broadcasting via the Arabsat, Nilesat and Hot Bird satellites. Most ART Channels are encrypted using Irdeto 2 Encryption. ART's technical broadcast facilities are based in Jordan Media City in Amman, Jordan.
On November 24, 2009, Al Jazeera purchased all of ART's sport channels which had the license to broadcast the FIFA World Cup 2010 and 2014 matches. This decision led to calls to boycotts of Al Jazeera by Arab football fans who were accustomed to watching major football events for free; and turned broadcast rights into a political issue where governments —who often purchased broadcasts and aired them locally for no charge, had to be involved.[2] ART Sports was subsequently rebranded as Al Jazeera Sports (since 2014, BeIN Sports). Later that year, ART also sold most of its remaining entertainment channels to Orbit Showtime Network.
