Legal Research

EU Court backs inclusion of World Cup and Euro Championship games on UK Free to Air list

By scott

The European General Court has ruled that the European Commission was within its rights to allow the UK and Belgium to list major footballing competitions such as the World Cup and the European championship finals as events that must be made available for free-to-air broadcast. The Court stated that the allows Member States to prohibit the exclusive broadcasting of events they judge to be of major importance for society where such broadcasting would deprive a substantial proportion of the public of the possibility of following those events on free television

The Court said that the fact that there is a direct reference to the World Cup and the EURO in recital 18 in the preamble to the Television without Frontiers Directive 97/36

18) Whereas it is essential that Member States should be able to take measures to protect the right to information and to ensure wide access by the public to television coverage of national or non-national events of major importance for society, such as the Olympic games, the football World Cup and European football championship; whereas to this end Member States retain the right to take measures compatible with Community law aimed at regulating the exercise by broadcasters under their jurisdiction of exclusive broadcasting rights to such events;

means that, “when a Member State includes matches from those competitions in the list it has decided to draw up, it does not need to include in its notification to the Commission specific grounds concerning their nature as an event of major importance for society.”

However, it said it would agree it could be questioned if ALL matches in these tournaments could be regarded as of ” major importance for society” in particular member states. Yes, the court says, the games featuring the member state and the final games of the tournament could certainly be regarded as such, but perhaps not other group games for example.

The problem the Court said was that due to the very nature of such tournaments it was hard - at the time when the national lists are drawn up or broadcasting rights acquired ? to know which matches may actually be decisive for the subsequent stages of those competitions or which ones may affect the fate of a given national team. For that reason, it may be acceptable for a Member State to consider that all of the matches of those competitions are of major importance for society.

The Court also dismissed FIFA and UEFA’s arguments that this destroyed commercial value of their broadcasting rights “because it does not oblige FIFA and UEFA to sell them on whatever conditions they can obtain.”

From a UK (and Belgian) viewers point of view this is a great ruling from the court.

The Current UK list, drawn up in 1998, is split between full live coverage protected (Group a) and secondary (highlights) protected (Group B) events>

Group A (Full Live Coverage Protected) ? The Olympic Games
? The FIFA World Cup Finals Tournament
? The European Football Championship Finals Tournament
? The FA Cup Final
? The Scottish FA Cup Final (in Scotland)
? The Grand National
? The Wimbledon Tennis Finals
? The Rugby World Cup Final
? The Derby
? The Rugby League Challenge Cup Final
Group B (Secondary Coverage Protected)
? Cricket Test Matches played in England
? Non-Finals play in the Wimbledon Tournament
? All Other Matches in the Rugby World Cup Finals Tournament
? Six Nations Rugby Tournament Matches Involving Home Countries
? The Commonwealth Games
? The World Athletics Championship
? The Cricket World Cup - the Final, Semi-finals and Matches Involving Home Nations’ Teams
? The Ryder Cup
? The Open Golf Championship

The last government looks at amending the list and the current government initially seemed very keen to step in and throw some more bones to the commercial rights holders. However, back in July 2010 Minister for Sport and the Olympics Hugh Robertson announced a decision to review the Free to Air list of sports events has been deferred until the end of the Digital Switchover process in 2012.

Full post as published by Information Overload on February 17, 2011 (boomark / email).