The Premiership business model and all the riches associated with it relies on the income from television rights. Two-thirds of this income is generated from the sale of UK rights, the rest elsewhere in the world, but more in Asia than in Europe.
The Premiership business model and all the riches associated with it relies on the income from television rights. Two-thirds of this income is generated from the sale of UK rights, the rest elsewhere in the world, but more in Asia than in Europe.
The long-term sustainability of this model has been called into question by a case brought by the landlady of a small pub in Portsmouth. Karen Murphy was fined for use Greek decoders to screen English Premier League mayches in her pub. She stated that her annual subscription for Sky was £7,000 compared to £800 a year for Nova, a Greek satellite company. She argued that the EU’s single market should allow her to use any European provider. The High Court referred to the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for an interpretation of European law.
The first stage of the legal process at EU level is the delivery of an opinion by an advocate general. Juliane Kokott has concluded that EU law does not make it possible to prohibit the live transmission of Premier League football matches in pubs by means of foreign decoder cards.
The European Court of Justice is not obliged to accept the advocate-general’s opinion, although it does more often than not. As far as I can see, and this view is shared by the sports lawyers I have heard from so far, the advocate-general’s opinion appears to be sound in law. Of course, if the ECJ endorsed it, the Premier League would appeal. This case could run and run.
The Premier League grants its licensses (such as Sky) the exclusive right to broadcast certain matches. In the view of the advocate general the exclusivity rights have the effect of partitioning the internal market into quite separate national markets, something which constitutes a serious impairment of the freedom to provide services.
Advocate General Kokott took the view that the economic exploitation of the rights to screen Premier League matches is not undermined by the use of foreign coder cards, as the corresponding charges have been paid for those cards. Whilst these charges are lower than those imposed in the UK, there is no specific right to charge different prices in each member state. Rather, it forms part of the logic of the intrenal market that price differences between member states should be offset by trade.
A particularly strong blow is delivered when she argues that the marketing of broadcasting rights on the basis of territorial exclusivity is tantamount to profiting from the elimination of the internal market. There is nothing specific about football that justifies a partitoning of the internal market..
The more that football becomes big business, the more likely it is that crucial commercial issues will have to be resolved by the courts.