Dave
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Post by Dave on Feb 4, 2011 20:17:35 GMT
I’m sure you are all aware that a Portsmouth pub landlady took her case to the European Court, after being fined £8.000 for showing live football matches in her pub supplied by a Greek company and not from Sky itself.
There has been many cases in the news over the years where pub landlords had to pay large fines for doing the very same thing, but things maybe about to change.
Mrs Murphy had argued the EU single market should let her use any European provider and yesterday Juliane Kokott, one of eight advocate generals of the European Court of Justice, agreed with her. The Advocate-General’s ‘opinion’ is not legally-binding, but the full panel of EU judges follows such advice in about 80 per cent of cases.
Sky charge pubs up to a thousand pounds a month for them to be allowed to show live matches and Mrs Murphy was being charged £600 per a month. The cost from the Greek company was just £800 per a year, that is one hell of a saving.
So what does it all mean? Well I would think anyone could get their sky sports etc from a provider in another country and make very large savings as well and as 3pm kick-offs are shown in other countries, I suppose they would then be able to be watched here in the UK. The downside of that is gates would be badly effected one would imagine, but what impact would the ruling have on football in this country?
I was surprised to learn that the Premier League sold three years of live TV rights to Sky and ESPN for an astonishing £1.782billion. BskyB paid more than £1.6billion of that. Its no wonder then that the top flight clubs pay the very high wages they do to players.
I was reading yesterday that the FA said it would have a major impact on the sport at grass levels, is that really the case? Does much if any at all of the money find its way down to the grass roots of the game?
I think Sky has got away far too long fleecing the British public with their very high charges and I’m pleased things may be about to change. The end result might be that clubs won’t have the money to pay such big wages to their super stars and in time football may one day become a sport that is once again affordable for the working man.
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Post by loyalgull on Feb 4, 2011 22:15:21 GMT
sky has got greedier and greedier,i have just dumped it,got fed up with repeats and second rate games,and a ever increasing monthly bill.But i would take it back on at a fraction of the price if available.If this case sticks,may start bringing some reality back into football,on the financial front and in the players heads,many who think they are superhuman and above us in every way.And it wont make any difference to clubs like ours,we never see any decent money anyway.I also see that they are looking into all 92 clubs and seeing if they can have pay per view on each club and keep the 3pm kick offs etc,it could well increase a lot of smaller clubs income
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Post by lambethgull on Feb 5, 2011 0:14:18 GMT
I was reading yesterday that the FA said it would have a major impact on the sport at grass levels, is that really the case? Does much if any at all of the money find its way down to the grass roots of the game? Don't the FA hold the rights to England games? One would think that the revenue generated from this this would be spent on the 'grass roots', but who knows, maybe it gets squandered on silly bids for World Cups  . Lower-league clubs receive some cash of course, although this is obviously minuscule compared to the amounts Premiership clubs get. BSkyB and the Premier League act as if this money comes from the goodness of their hearts, but everyone knows the money they allocate for this purpose serves as little more than a sop. It will be hilarious though if this does become a ruling. Who could not take some satisfaction from this when one considers the greedy b**tards whoring their product around Europe whilst at the same time trying to enforce a monopoly in the UK. Slick and professional their product may be, but if you create a demand for a product don't be surprised when your customers decide to see if they can get that product at a cheaper rate from elsewhere! |
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Post by aussie on Feb 5, 2011 11:50:42 GMT
Sky charge landlords the `ratable value` of the property i.e. if your rates are £18,000 a year like some of the bigger pubs and working mans clubs then £18,000 is what Sky will demand a year to show their channels, this is all to subsidize the prices that the home consumer pays. This is one of the reasons why there are lower gates, gates have gone down since the introduction of Sky Sports, if Sky charged more for their domestic sports package then people might get out of their armchairs more often and actually attend games live.
The biggest problem football faces with foriegn Sports Channels is they show 3 o`clock kick-offs on Saturdays so people will go to the pubs instead of going to live games, as a package the foriegn systems are too dear for domestic purposes so all we see is a migration from armchair to pub. What we need is a law (which is in place) to stop landlords from screening 3 oclock k.o offs and also competition for Sky so the prices come down, that way more people go to games, landlords pay less and Sky get what they deserve, a kick in the nuts!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2011 14:16:28 GMT
It will be interesting see how this plays out. There's a long way to go & no final decision has yet been made.
Personally I don't want to see politicians meddling or legislating. If some Landlady from Portsmouth wants to buy her satellite stuff from a greek company I think she should be allowed to do so. Also, what she cares to show on her TV in her pub should also be her choice.
I'm sure everyone would adapt sensibly to new circumstances if they arise. For instance if Premier league games were being broadcast live at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon it would be suicidal for small clubs such as Torquay to schedule their matches for the same day & with exactly the same kick off time.
Perhaps the lower Leagues would move to a lunchtime kick off & Boots & Laces would change so as to provide late lunches and a wonderful big screen experience for those that then want to settle down to watch Arsenal v Man Utd or whoever.
Then again the lower Leagues may decide Sunday football would be the better option. Plenty of room for innovation if & when things change.
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Dave
TFF member
Posts: 13,081
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Post by Dave on Oct 4, 2011 14:30:01 GMT
A big well done to Mrs Murphy for having the ball to stand up and fight the case brought against her by the Premiership for showing live football supplied to her by a Greek company and coming out the winner.
We are either in the EU or not and why should Sky and the premiership have been allowed to get away with so long ripping of the British public with their over prised TV packages to watch live football etc.
So what will happen next? Will Sky put up the prices to all the foreign companies forcing them to fall in line with UK prices? I think every pub that is showing sky sports will be hoping not and on the phone right now changing over to some company abroad to make the huge savings Mrs Murphy was.
Maybe Sky will have to give less money to the Premiership and I hope that is what happens and we see player’s wages at the very top start to fall and fall. No one is worth the sort of money being paid right not just to kick a bloody football around surely?
People were up in arms on the J.Vine show today because tube train drivers will see their wages go up to 52 grand a year, now while I feel that is maybe a bit to much, after the tube bombings in London a few years ago, I would want more than that figure just to go and ride on one.
The game off football in my view as been ruined by greed and far too much money having to go into it, after all it was only ever a sport in the first place and look at what it has not become.
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Post by lambethgull on Oct 4, 2011 22:30:29 GMT
Yes, well done to Karen Murphy for standing up to the Sky bullyboys and reminding everyone that laws are supposed to apply to all - even if those laws were designed by and for the likes of Sky rather than individual licensees of small public houses. Congratulations as well to the RMT for the deal they've secured. Bob Crow gets a pounding from well-paid journalists and the ill-informed, but it isn't his job to please them. In reality, it wasn't Crow or RMT shop stewards that got this deal but the solidarity and balls of the rank and file who refuse to sell their time and labour cheaply. Kudos to Mrs Murphy and the RMT!  |
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Post by Father Jack on Oct 5, 2011 8:55:05 GMT
It will certainly matter to us if pubs and clubs start showing live footie at 3 on a Saturday afternoon. There's already live footie most Sundays, so it would be a waste of time moving League matches to then. Expect to see smaller clubs go to the wall due to falling attendances if live footie on a Saturday becomes commonplace.
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Post by aussie on Oct 5, 2011 12:27:26 GMT
It will certainly matter to us if pubs and clubs start showing live footie at 3 on a Saturday afternoon. There's already live footie most Sundays, so it would be a waste of time moving League matches to then. Expect to see smaller clubs go to the wall due to falling attendances if live footie on a Saturday becomes commonplace. And for the uninformed, quite a lot of pubs have been showing 3p.m. Saturday football for years, I used to install it and used to get panicing landlords ringing me just before kick off asking me if I could go to their pub and get the football working as someone had messed the system up on the Friday night trying to get porn on! After a while I would make sure that before 3p.m. Saturdays my phone was switched off. This showing of 3p.m footy didn`t seem to have much effect on gates then so why should it now? As far as knock on effects in the world of football, well this ruling might just give football back to the fans because sky will stop selling the product overseas and will stop pumping the vast fortunes of wealth into the Premiership thus players wages going down radically which inturn will stop the foriegn money grabbing players from arriving on these shores, this in turn should help improve the England team due to much more home grown talent to actually grace the field of play. What this woman has done in a way is too shoot herself square in the foot because she will not be able to buy foriegn subscription, not be able to afford Sky and thus show nothing to attract punters. Another side effect of this is that you will see less and less vans driving around installing Sat Systems because the pub and club installs were where the money was, not domestic, they will go under. The beuaty of the system when it was in a massive grey area was that you could coin in on it and it would support your domestic work turning £200 a day into £800-£1200 a day, £200 a day only just covers your overheads! |
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Post by Ditmar van Nostrilboy on Oct 5, 2011 13:12:08 GMT
It will certainly matter to us if pubs and clubs start showing live footie at 3 on a Saturday afternoon. There's already live footie most Sundays, so it would be a waste of time moving League matches to then. Expect to see smaller clubs go to the wall due to falling attendances if live footie on a Saturday becomes commonplace. Commonplace probably being the operative word there. If a legal precedent is set, then there will be no reprecussions for the larger pubs (usually chains) to use imported decoders/cards. Thats something the big organisations have stayed away from so far. |
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Post by aussie on Oct 5, 2011 13:34:27 GMT
You won`t have to worry next season because as I have already said that Sky WILL do something to stop British establishments getting hold of their product from foriegn sources, like not selling it to foriegn suppliers or like in Italy where you can only have one card per post coded address and this is done through the tax system therefore you would need to know a resident Italian with a legit post code and convince them they don`t need or want their card. You can buy Sky Italia systems over here but they are nearly as expensive a BSB anyway because they are rare and hard to get hold of. If anything happens it will be totally illegal non-Euro card that get installed like ART and other African based suppliers which results in fines up to and above the £30,000 mark if caught showing them in a public arena. Most landlords I know won`t touch these non-Euro cards so there will only be a few which won`t effect the gates at any grounds what so ever!
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JamesB
TFF member
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Post by JamesB on Oct 5, 2011 20:30:09 GMT
I think there may have been a misinterpreting of the ruling here. This was not as clear cut a win for Mrs Murphy as the media made out. While it is perfectly legal for any home owner to use a foreign box, the laws are very different for pubs, because the Premier League has copyright in the broadcasts - the logo, the pre-match anthem, the graphics etc. So it's still illegal for pubs to broadcast matches to the public in this way, and no doubt the Premier League will take further steps to make sure of it, like (as is already the case in F1, for instance) making sure the Premier League logo is on the screen all the time
Also I don't buy this idea that people will go to the pub to watch a Premier League 3 pm Saturday kick-off instead of going to a lower league match. I read this week that there have been studies done into this which suggest that the blackout doesn't make any difference to attendances
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Post by lambethgull on Oct 5, 2011 21:51:00 GMT
I think there may have been a misinterpreting of the ruling here. This was not as clear cut a win for Mrs Murphy as the media made out. While it is perfectly legal for any home owner to use a foreign box, the laws are very different for pubs, because the Premier League has copyright in the broadcasts - the logo, the pre-match anthem, the graphics etc. So it's still illegal for pubs to broadcast matches to the public in this way, and no doubt the Premier League will take further steps to make sure of it, like (as is already the case in F1, for instance) making sure the Premier League logo is on the screen all the time It wasn't a total win for her, agreed, but I'm not sure she's 'shot herself in the foot' as Aussie suggests. As I understand it she hasn't been showing live football for several years now, and she hasn't said she has any plans to do so in the future either. I've no doubt that Sky and the Premier League will be looking to secure their strangle-hold, but on the flip side there are ways and means for broadcasters/licensees to circumvent the copywrite restrictions as the deals currently stand (such as not showing the opening sequences etc). It's often said that Champions League nights have an impact on lower-league attendances, but the cold weather and work the following day are factors too. 'Big' Premiership games might impact on attendances for lower-league clubs, but few of these are played on at 3pm on Saturday in any case. It's difficult to imagine attendances at Plainmoor, Morecambe or Rotherham being down because Chelsea vs Blackburn is on at the pub. |
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