Publicans eye cheap soccer access
The Vintners’ Federation of Ireland, which represents 4,500 publicans outside Dublin, is considering the implications of the case in which English pub landlady Karen Murphy won a legal battle to overturn her conviction for using foreign decoders to show Premier League games.
Hitting out at the high cost of screening sport in pubs, Vintners’ chief executive Padraig Cribben said the organisation was awaiting clarification of the legal position for its members.
“The VFI believes that the cost of SKY to its members is at best prohibitive and at worst an abuse of a monopoly,” he said.
“We calculate the average cost to our members for screening sport is in the region of €800 per month and can be anything up to an outrageous €1,500 a month if packages such as Sky Ultimate, Setanta, At The Races and Racing UK are added. It can be a multiple of this figure if several screens are used within a premises.”
The VFI said it was anxious to see immediate acceptance of viewing cards from within the EU legalised for commercial purposes in Ireland.
The Sky contract, which is worth €2bn, has made the Premier League the richest soccer competition in the world but while yesterday’s decision is a setback, it is only a “minor inconvenience” to the league, according to media law expert Simon Johnson.
The high court in London yesterday copperfastened an earlier European Court ruling that allowed Ms Murphy — along with other publicans in Britain and possibly Ireland — to use cheaper satellite decoders to view Premier League matches.
She used a Greek decoder to screen live afternoon matches on Saturdays, paying the equivalent of about €1,000 a year for the service instead of up to 10 times that much for a Sky subscription.
According to Mr Johnson, former director of legal and business affairs at the Premier League and now a consultant with Charles Russell solicitors, Britain’s leading sports and media law firm, the league may favour selling European-wide rights as a solution.
“If I were a publican, either in the UK or Ireland, I wouldn’t be popping the champagne corks just yet.
“This ruling affects the current broadcasting rights regime which has only a year to run.
“As well as that, knowing my former colleagues, I suspect they will move quickly to close up this loophole.
“For the next year they will not be able to stop pubs, hotels and clubs buying cheap satellite cards to show European feeds of their 3pm games.
“However, they will find a way of resolving the problem in the longer term; either by selling their rights to one broadcaster across the whole of Europe or by setting up their own TV channel or granting rights in different languages,” he said.
Mr Johnson said the European Court ruling could hit film and TV programme makers.
“This case has wide-ranging implications for other businesses that sell rights on a territory by territory basis. That, for example, is how film rights are sold and it’s the same with TV.”
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