Arabsat was created to deliver satellite-based, public and private telecommunications services to the Arab States, in accordance with International Standards.

On 14 April 1976, Arabsat was formed under Arab League jurisdiction with the goal of serving the information, cultural and educational needs of its member states.

All Arab League states except for Comoros are shareholders of Arabsat:[2] Arabsat-1 was the model designator for a series of first-generation satellites built by an international team led by Aérospatiale of France.

Arabsat-1B, the second flight model, was deployed in June 1985, from the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-51-G, and placed into service near 26.0° east, and remained in operation until mid-1992.

[3] Arabsat-1C, the third satellite of the series, was launched by Ariane on 26 February 1992, as a stop-gap measure to maintain network services until the Arabsat second generation spacecraft became available.

[4] A contract for two Arabsat second-generation satellites was signed with Aérospatiale in April 1993, to build several additional comsats based on the Spacebus 3000A platform.

Saudi was strongly criticized in a letter issued by sports bodies including, FIFA, UEFA, Spain's La Liga, Germany's Bundesliga and Italy's Serie A along with the Asian Football Confederation.

[15] The letter was issued after 18 months of failed efforts at legally challenging Saudi Arabia to block beoutQ for pirate broadcasting the entire World Cup 2018.

The sporting bodies have also accused nine Saudi Arabian legal firms of not taking on their copyright infringement case, following which the authorities are seeking to adopt other means for the shut down of the state-run broadcaster.