Premier league TV rights case to begin 04/10/2010 |
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This week the European Court of Justice will hear a case brought by a Portsmouth-based pub landlord, which could become a landmark of how sports broadcasting rights are sold across Europe.
The case is provoked by Karen Murphy, who 5 years ago tried to draw clients by showing Premier League football matches on the TV in her pub. Later, she found the monthly subscription to Sky Sports increasingly unaffordable as she had to pay more than £1,000 a month. She found an alternative means through a subscription to a Greek satellite broadcaster, NOVA. The satellite card’s cost was one 10th of what Karen was paying to BSkyB.
The use of foreign subscription cards is against UK copyright law, because the means by which they screen football is not via the authorized broadcaster - Sky Sports. As a result, Ms Murphy was taken to court and ended up having to pay nearly £8,000 in fines and costs.
Five years later she has taken her appeal all the way to the grand chamber of the European Court of Justice. The use of imported satellite decoders is undermining the exclusivity of Sky's £1.8bn deal but she claims that restricting her choice of satellite TV providers to a single one is against the European Union principles of free movement of goods and services between member states of the EU.
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