Don’t be soft-soaped by salesmen offering Premiership Games on the cheap warns Phil Dixon CMBII

25-Nov-2005

‘Education is when you read the small print, experience is when you don’t’.

Now I am under no illusions that the prices charged by Sky as a result of their perceived ‘monopoly’ of the provision of satellite sport in Britain are about as popular as on the spot surprise VAT investigations.

Faced with increases that defy any economic logic I may personally understand, I can comprehend licensees in their desperation being tempted to install ‘foreign satellite systems’.

However, as with the many hundreds of licensees who each year are duped into giving money ‘up-front’ to ‘rating cowboys’, will it all end on tears?

A cowboy calls

 

Here’s a scenario:

A salesman armed with a photocopy of a legal looking document informs you that under European law you can have this Scandinavian / Greek / Spanish / N. African system in your pub and show the ‘premier league’ all the time for a one-off payment of around £1,800.

You are told: ‘It’s all legal under EU law i.e. restraint of trade, cross border competition, the very essence of the ‘Treaty of Rome’.

You order the equipment, then a plain old white van appears and installs it. You advertise it and the next thing you know you are being served a legal notice to cease the activity you have just paid and astronomical amount for:

Sounds familiar?

What are the issues? There are two.

1)     FA Copyright

Under pressure from UEFA the FA Premier League has a copyright which prevents the showing of live matches in the UK between 14.45 and 17.15 on a Saturday. This is called the ‘closed period’ and its aim is to ensure the future development of the game. Try to get twenty-two people to turn out in a Tipton and District Division Six game when Wolves v Albion is live on TV!

So any pub showing live ‘Premiership’ football between 14.45 and 17.15 is going to fall foul of the FA’s copyright and probably get a written warning and / or finish up in court with a fine, costs and criminal record. The judge in FACT v Kenny, Wigan Magistrates Court June 1st 2004 made this particularly clear.

2)     What about the period outside Saturday afternoons?

Surely if I have paid for a Greek public viewing card I must under European law be able to show it. Sounds plausible doesn’t it?

Once again the issue is about copyright. The FA has passed on the exclusoive territory rights to SKY to show the Premier League in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

When the FA reaches an agreement with the provider of Greek Satellite TV it will be on the basis that it is for a specific geographical area that certainly won’t include the UK. You will not be able to provide a ‘Greek’ contract showing rights to broadcast in the UK.

I accept that as those licensees who registered their initial SKY at a domestic address and then showed it in their pubs, took the view that it is a calculated risk. If we only have a 12% detection rate for burglaries then it is hardly surprising that houses are broken into every night. If you are in the middle of nowhere will they ever find you?

There are two factors you must bear in mind.  Your BII fellow licensees will be the first to ‘shop you’ the minute his / her regulars leave their pub in droves at 14.40 on a Saturday to watch the footy in your pub.

Licensees who pay out several hundred pounds a month have little sympathy for those who don’t and the recent addition of a pint glass symbol for ‘legal’ providers will assist this process.

Under the new licensing act a prosecution for breaching copyright could well result in the loss of your entire business.

I am sure some solicitors will argue if I have paid to show Canal+ in my Benidorm bar then to prevent me taking my equipment to a bar in Portugal, Belgium or the UK and showing the Premier League is contrary to the very principle of the European Union. Although it is with the blessing of the current European Commission* the process by which UEFA and national football associations sell the rights to broadcast the leagues perhaps one day will be challenged.  But until the European Court rules on the matter then let’s say you may have not been yellow carded, but you have been warned!         

Don’t shoot the messenger!

* See www.uefa.com click on organisation and then on television rights.