Battle for control? Copyright, football and European media rights

Abstract

The position of copyright in the arena of sports content rights and property rights of sporting organizations is a highly contested area of legal and commercial interest in the digital age. At its core is the issue of whether copyright can be incorporated into sports rights contracts as it has been for many years. This article identifies the ramifications of this debate for the existing business models for both rights holders (Football Association (FA) Premier League, Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)) and broadcasters. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, this research analyses the strategic responses of pan-European broadcasters in the field, and key football content rights holders at both the national and European level. How will these developments affect both the pan-European and national markets for football rights? How does copyright law affect live and recorded games and what are the implications for the wider European audio-visual sector of changes in the rights regime for European cultural content?

Copyright: a systemic marketplace icon

“…Copyright is experienced differently depending on where you are in the chain of production and motivations for supporting it vary widely. Artists, workers, intermediaries, libraries and archives, commercial users and individual consumers draw on arguments grounded in marketing, consumption, personal identity, community and connection alongside the rights to reward and access that industry rights holders and activists promote (Boyle 2015;Edwards et al 2015b;Phillips and Street 2015;Henkel, James, and Croce 2016). Each of these groups has a stake in how copyright is talked about as well as the uses to which it is put.…”

The next big match: Convergence, competition and sports media rights

“…And, in 2008, France Telecom, rebranded as Orange, launched Orange Sport, which was made available via its own ADSL network following a deal for the exclusive live rights to some Ligue 1 matches (Kuhn, 2011: 48 To some extent, the growing involvement of telecommunications operators in the buying and distribution of premium sports rights is part of a wider change in the 'media sport content economy', whereby the growth of new media technology, chiefly the internet, mobile devices and social media, represent a shift from the long-established 'broadcast model' characterised by scarcity, with high barriers of access and costs restricting the number of media companies and sports organisations able to create, control and distribute popular sports content, to a 'networked model' defined by 'digital plenitude' with new technology significantly lowering entry barriers to commercialise sports content (Hutchins and Rowe, 2009). At the same time, however, the availability of premium sports rights remains tightly controlled by leading sports organisations, such as Europe's national football leagues, who are keen to preserve a major source of revenue and have made a concerted effort to ensure that any loss of value to their rights from breaches of copyright via illegal internet streams is relatively limited (Boyle, 2015). Consequently, in an increasingly converged media environment, premium sports rights remain as important, if not more important, than ever.…”

“…In 2011, the ruling of the European Court of Justice in the 'Murphy case' made it clear that the way that rights are currently sold on a territory-by-territory basis is 'irreconcilable' with the single internal market (EC, 2012). A combination of 'cultural reasons' and the nationally focused strategies employed by rights holders may well mean that there is little immediate prospect of a panEuropean rights market (Boyle, 2015), but the European Commission's (2015) Digital Single Market Strategy signalled that movement in this direction remains a political priority (EC, 2015). Thirdly, major commercial players have also moved to enhance their ability to purchase and/or distribute sports rights on a pan-European level.…”

“The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same”: Path dependency, sports content, and the suppression of innovation in mobile television

“…As one of the most valuable forms of content in the global media market, sport is a crucial site where the clash between the ''newer dynamics'' produced by consumer technology innovation and the ''older balance'' favoured by market incumbents occurs (Boyle, 2015;Rowe, 2011). Recent examples of copyright disputes include the successful legal action launched in the US by the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and several free-to-air and cable television broadcasters against the Aereo Internet and mobile television service (Boren, 2014;Menell and Nimmer, 2014).…”

“…In the UK and France, football leagues and broadcasters have warned fans not to film and post highlights of goals on mobile video-sharing services and social networks such as Vine and Twitter because of the ''the potential 'commercial damage' the posts can have on a broadcast rights-holder'' (Sport Business, 2014;Williams, 2014). 3 Further demonstrating the changing geographies of television systems (Burroughs and Rugg, 2014) is a high-profile and complex case heard by the European Court of Justice in which a publican in the UK, Karen Murphy, purchased and used the decoder device of a Greek satellite television channel to show English Premier League (EPL) games in her pub (Boyle, 2015). Murphy's action challenged the nationally exclusive system of licencing coverage rights to football broadcasts in Europe.…”