SKY TELEVISION’S control over broadcasting rights for soccer and rugby and a host of other sports has been thrown into doubt after a ruling by the European Union’s highest court that the sale of sporting rights on a country-by-country basis is in breach of EU law.
The decision could have huge ramifications for how television rights are sold across the European Union. It has been welcomed by politicians and groups representing Irish publicans, many of whom spend more than €12,000 a year for the right to screen Premier League football.
However, the European Court of Justice ruling is unlikely to immediately cut the cost of screening live football matches for publicans, the majority of whom are locked into contracts with Sky.
The ruling came about after an English pub landlady, Karen Murphy, was fined for screening live English Premier League matches via a Greek pay-TV decoder. She appealed to the European Court of Justice, which yesterday found in her favour. It found that banning the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards was “contrary to the freedom to provide services, and cannot be justified”.
The judges also said the English Premier League could not claim copyright over matches because they were not its “intellectual creation”. It added that opening video sequences, pre-recorded films and highlights packages were “works” protected by copyright.
The ruling could mean the end of “crippling subscription fees from quasi-monopolies like BSkyB”, Labour’s Ireland East MEP Nessa Childers said. The ruling, she said, had “blown wide open the system of providing sports coverage on TV, which until now has been dominated by giant money-makers like ESPN and BSkyB”.
The chief executive of the Licensed Vintners’ Association, Donall O’Keeffe, also welcomed the move and said he would be seeking a meeting with Sky Ireland to discuss its ramifications.
While he was encouraged by the ruling, he warned it would have no immediate impact on publicans as they were all locked into 12-month contracts with Sky that were signed in July or August.
The current system is “not a fair, free choice”, said Ms Murphy yesterday morning. She said she paid about £800 (€928) annually for the Greek service while the Sky package would have cost her £8,400 (€9,750).
“This could drive a coach and horses through Sky’s business model for broadcasting of Premier League matches,” said Stuart Adams, a partner at British law firm Rouse. “This is going to lead to more football on the telly for fans to watch, and less money for clubs to lavish on the salaries of their top players. That will please most fans. But it will also lead to smaller clubs going out of business, which is not good news for fans at all.” While the case focused on pubs’ use of Greek satellite decoder cards, there “seems to be little to stop individual members of the public from appropriately acquiring cheap EU decoder cards from Greece or another EU country and watching the games in their homes”, said London-based solicitor Graham Shear.
