http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15162241

It's for reasons such as this that I love the European Union and the "common market".

Yup becaue by this ruling the price for everyone will go up.

If that's how the Premier League choose to deal with the ruling so be it, but talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Yes the EU has so many advantages. If the Tories ever try leaving the EU via a referendum, try selling the fact that TV football rights will be much more expensive under a UK outside the EU.

If they decided to increase the costs considerably to foreign broadcasters then they will simply price it off the screens. Their overall revenue from abroad will drop. Without these fans watching the value to the clubs in terms of marketing value will plummet. Man United are very popular in the far east but if they had to charge more then the issue of piracy will raise its head there. They will not benefit as much from overseas tours because they will have priced themselves out of the market.

I know you have a hate on with the Tories but as they have no plans to have a referendum to leave the EU anyway, that is a tenuous link to make at best.

What is most likely to happen is that the premier league will sell pan european rights to Sky and ESPN.

lets see UK rights over £1 billion vs £130 million for european. I think I know which revenue the premier league would prefer to lose.

Yes but they will not be allowed to cut off consumers like that. If they did that then the chances are that they would face unlimited fines in the EU courts for illegal practices.

They wont cut off consumers they will just raise the cost, then consumers can have the choice of paying or not. As long as the PL can get the huge amounts of money off SKY and ESPN they wont care if the european viewer numbers go down.

In fact. the EPL makes only roughly 15% of it's TV revenue out of televising games in Europe. The two ameajot earners TV wise are the US (somewhat strangely) and the far east.

Even if the ruling alters the way TV rights are sold in Europe, they'll make little difference in the grand scheme of things.

The worst bit is people like Kudos jumping on the bandwagon and complaining because they won't be able to sell their shows on a country by country basis any more so they'll go out of business. What, people were importing Greek satellite decoders to watch Spooks were they now?

Jon

this could go on and on and on.

Indeed. Sky/ESPN will attempt to plaster their brand on the screen as often as possible to make as much of the broadcast 'copyright' as possible. What in fact will happen is the current trend for people getting their 'pirate feed' via the Internet rather than through a dish will only accelerate. This ruling does nothing to either stop or aid that trend. As streaming and broadband services improve so people will cease bothering with satellite decoders altogether. It's a ruling that is already late and in five years will be already antiquated.

The ruling re: pubs is interesting now but again will be obsolete soon. A pub showing the game on a big screen tv is one thing, but what can they do about a pub with wifi ( which is a completely legit service to offer) and a URL on a chalkboard? If one person per table has an tablet, why do you need the tv?

As always, the broadcasters themselves are way behind the public.

The most interesting thing about this case is "freedom to provide services" ruling which flies in the face of regional copyrights.


I really don't think that will catch on. It's just not the same as all standing around one big screen.

Also, I'm not sure that right now there are many pubs with internet that's up to 20 simultaneous streaming video feeds. Hopefully that will change, but not in time for next season's big games.

Of course it doesn't effect me anyway. When there's sport on down the pub, I'd rather watch something else in the comfort of my home with a bottle of something decent.

He's an idea. Instead of raising prices, they pay the permier league less and footballers wages don't go up any further for a few years.

Affect?