By Andrew Warshaw
October 4 – A suburban English publican takes her case for screening live Premiership football to the European Court of Justice today in a landmark move described as potentially the Bosman of broadcasting.
Karen Murphy, who runs a pub in Portsmouth, is confident her action will set an historic precedent, with pubs and clubs throughout the UK able to defy a Premier League ban by screening regular Saturday afternoon matches without fear of prosecution.
For years pubs in cities across Britain have been routinely using imported satellite decoder cards to screen top-flight games, unwilling to pay the increasingly unaffordable monthly subscription to Sky, the official broadcaster.
European broadcasters do not have to abide by the Premier League’s Saturday afternoon restriction and the foreign decoders allow landlords to show games prohibited to Sky subscribers.
Using such equipment breaks UK copyright law, however, and Murphy has so far paid more than £8,000 in fines and costs.
Five years on from her first appearance in a magistrates court, she has now taken her appeal all the way to the European Court of Justice and is adamant she has done nothing wrong, citing the single European market and freedom of trade.
“I think it’s greed dictating to small people what they can and can not do, purely for profit,” said Murphy.
The hearing will at last clear up issues that have long confused publicans and licensees.
Saturday afternoon Premier League games are regularly screened overseas where copyright rules are differemt and the need to protect attendance figures does not apply.
If Murphy wins the case, pubs and clubs could have carte blanche to legally do as they please.
As a result, the future value of the Premier League’s broadcasting rights are bound to be seriously undermined - with top-flight clubs taking a massive hit in revenue.
Not only that. Critics of Murphy’s stance stress that while loyal season-ticket holders and Sky subscribers shell out good money for the privilege of watching top-flight football, millions of others are getting in on the act for free - taking advantage of unofficial pirate broadcasts.
Murphy does not buy that argument.
“If I wanted to go and buy a car, I could go to any garage I like,” she said.
“As a publican, if I want to show football, I can only go to the Sky garage, and have to pay 10 times the price of anybody else [in Europe]. I don’t believe that’s fair.
“The law needs changing. If I don’t fight who is going to?”
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