This week’s ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) brought just as many questions as it did answers as to just what can be shown from a ‘foreign’ satellite operator, writes Julian Clover
Portsmouth publican Karen Murphy appears to have successfully argued that she was within her rights to purchase a subscription from the Greek DTH platform Multichoice Hellas.
According to the ECJ, to limit broadcast rights to a particular geographic territory is a restriction of competition. However, elements such as the opening title sequences provided to broadcasters outside of the UK, highlights packages and even the on-screen logo that contains the score still count as copyrighted material.
Uppermost in the minds of the Premier League will be the multi-million pound contract with the two UK rights holders, Sky and ESPN, to broadcast six matches per week. While strictly the responsibility of the Football Association, there is also whether the widespread availability of a 3pm Saturday afternoon kick-of might affect attendance at lower league grounds.
Actually, with midweek European football often displacing parts of the Premier League programme to Sunday it is surprising there are any Saturday 3pm kick-offs at all.
There are about 18 months left on the current Premier League contract. Given the state of the Greek economy one could mischieviously question whether any broadcaster could afford to purchase anything right now. Would European competition law prevent Sky and/or ESPN from simply buying all the rights to any European territory and then only selling them on to those platforms where UK reception required a dish size of 2 metres and above? Probably.
And how smart would be the broadcaster that decided to openly sell overseas subscriptions when it came to the next round of negotiations? Whatever happens you can be sure that football authorities and broadcasters alike will be pouring over the legislation before any further sales are made.
An individual who does decide to go the foreign route may be in for a few surprises. Additional receivers – no CI slot on the Sky box – new dish, engineer for the install. As for the cost, the last time I embarked on a compare and contrast, pricing for the European packages was much the same.
