Legal

This was the theme tackled by Richard Parrish of Edgehill University at the recent Sport and the EU conference.   He noted that the EU had to manage a transformation that involved balancing different business models while functioning as a sports regulator.

One of the most interesting presentations at last week's Sport and EU conference was by footballer Gareth Farrelly, badged as from Edgehill University.    In March 2007 Cork City asked Fifa to make an exception to the then rules on player registration.  Farrelly had already played in matches for two different clubs in the period between July 2006 and March 2007 and so would be ineligible to play for Cork until July 2007.   It should be noted that summer football had been introduced in Ireland.

The so-called 'pubcasting' cases refer to pub landlords showing live football matches by subscribing to services from outside the UK rather than obtaining a license from Sky.   They were discussed by Daniel Geey, a solicitor from Field Fisher Waterhouse at last week's Sport and the European Union conference.

At the end of last week I attended the 6th annual conference of the Association for the Study of Sport and the European Union at Nottingham Trent University.   I was presenting on the Premier League, but there were a number of other fascinating papers that gave me new insights into the interface between sport and law, the governance of football and future business trends.    I will be reporting on these papers over the next week or so.