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A Court of Appeal verdict against the British Horse Racing Board has placed at risk the lucrative rights the Premier and Football Leagues enjoy from selling the publishing rights to their fixtures. The leagues collectively earn millions of pounds a year from newspapers, magazines, websites and bookmakers for allowing them to display their fixtures. The money is important as it could help to offset any further fall in the value of televison rights - the price per live match fell in the last deal. The two leagues set up Football Dataco, a company that grants licenses for all its commercial activities, and it was hoped that it could increase revenue substantially by selling licences around the world to publish fixture lists. The Premier League made representations at the horseracing case and is confident that the outcome will not affect its own rights. A statement from the Premiership said, 'we are confident that the facts of the British Horseracing Board case differ from the protection afforded to our fuxtures under UK copyright law.' The Football League was more cautious in its initial response. The question of the copyright of fixtures first arose in the interwar period when obtaining income from the football pools was an important issue and the ruling at that time was that drawing up the fixtures involved considerable skill. These days much of the task is done by a computer programme operating within fixed parameters, although human intervention is required for the key decisions.
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