Slashdot Mirror
EU Court Rules Against Exclusive TV Licensing Deal
First time accepted submitter r5r5 writes "In possibly a ground-breaking rule, European Court of Justice ruled against exclusive rights to broadcast sporting events within a single member state. The motivation is that such an agreement would enable each broadcaster to be granted absolute territorial exclusivity in the area covered by its licence and would therefore eliminate all competition between broadcasters in the field of those services and would thus partition the national markets in accordance with national borders. Could this be the beginning of dismounting the legacy system of exclusive distribution rights awarded to one company in one state?"
A quick note to catch the Americans up on what matters most in the world:
Pubs in Britain had to pay more to show English games than pubs overseas because Sky (who held the British rights) charged more.
English football league is the richest in the world (most watched sports league in the world as a result)- in part because the TV money is so much higher there so it gets the best quality players.
A certain % of Sky's money there goes back to the clubs.
The English league will now lose some of the monetary advantage it had because Sky will have to compete with cheapo-European networks.
Recently Liverpool Football Club asked to be able to negotiate their own TV rights outside of the league. Their argument : we're a big club- we have more fans- more people turn on the telly to watch us than some of the smaller clubs- we should get more money than smaller clubs that no-one watches.
This was quickly shot down by everyone else who said it was a terrible idea. ESPECIALLY from the smaller clubs who would as a result get less money- but even some of the big clubs who would get more money as a result were not in favour.
This is actually how it works in Spain- where clubs like Real Madrid, and Barcelona have budgets that dwarf anyone else. Real Madrid and Barca are the big teams- they negotiate their own TV deals- and as a result have been (even before now) making more money than even the English teams- despite the Spanish league being poorer (wealthwise) in general.
Liverpool have a point though- now England is losing their advantage as a league- Real Madrid and Barcelona are going to have way more money than any club in England- because they get to negotiate their own deals. Being in England is no longer an advantage- so the wealth gap to the big Spanish teams will grow.
The tide of power that had been in England for a number of years is now going to shift back to Spain again because their clubs will have much bigger budgets.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It sounds good, but the ruling has loopholes you could drive a bus through. Specifically, while the match itself cannot be subject to exclusivity agreements, any copyrighted material (theme tunes and title sequences before the ad breaks, the little logo in the bottom right of the screen, the commentary, etc.) can still be controlled as the copyright holder wishes.