Premier League to challenge Ofcom over Sky ruling

April 16 – The Premier League has confirmed its intention to launch a legal challenge against Ofcom’s price cut for Sky’s premium sport channels.

Following a three-year review of the pay-TV industry, the media regulator has ordered Sky to reduce the wholesale price of Sky Sports 1 and 2 by 23.4 per cent for rival operators.

Ofcom believes that the resulting increased competition would bring fresh investment in services and a wider range of innovations for consumers.

After taking legal advice on Ofcom’s 655-page pay-TV report, Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore has now decided that there is “no option other than to mount a challenge to their proposed action”.

The Premier League will officially lodge a legal filing at the Competition Appeals Tribunal.

In a statement, Scudamore said that the consequences for UK sport from Ofcom’s new pricing model are “too serious and fundamental for us to ignore”.

He claimed that forcing Sky to reduce the price of its premium sport channels will reduce the incentives for all broadcasters, including Sky, to invest in sports rights deals.

“This can only have a negative impact on the ability of sport to attract a fair return on its content in an open market, which is necessary to ensure appropriate investment in maintaining the highest quality of that content,” said Scudamore.

“The effect will be to subsidise companies that have shown little appetite for investing in content and fundamentally damage the investment models that have helped sport become a successful part of the UK economy and made sport so attractive to UK consumers.

We, and our clubs, operate in a highly competitive market and we intend to resist strenuously this unjustified attempt to reward risk-averse companies and undermine not only English football but UK sport as a whole.”

Sky has already confirmed plans to challenge Ofcom’s ruling at the Competition Appeals Tribunal, while the Rugby Football League has also mooted taking legal action.

However, Ofcom said that it is “in consumers’ interests for our pay-TV decisions to come into effect as soon as possible to deliver the benefits of wider choice and innovation”.

The regulator added: “We are happy to defend our decision wherever necessary.”