Watson, Chris; Graham, Christine --- "European Regulation of Media Rights" [2011] ELECD 823; in Nafziger, A.R. James; Ross, F. Stephen (eds), "Handbook on International Sports Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Handbook on International Sports Law

Editor(s): Nafziger, A.R. James; Ross, F. Stephen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847206336

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: European Regulation of Media Rights

Author(s): Watson, Chris; Graham, Christine

Number of pages: 31

Extract:

14 European regulation of media rights
Chris Watson and Christine Graham



INTRODUCTION
This chapter analyses the effect of media rights regimes and certain regulatory arrange-
ments on the sporting world in various European jurisdictions. Although European
Union (EU) law applicable to the exercise of sports-related commercial rights is in the
early stage of quite rapid evolution, to date it has had a significant impact in a number of
areas, including:

1. ticket sales arrangements under EU competition law;
2. restrictions on broadcasting output and broadcasting new media in relation to the
English Premier League;
3. collective sales of football broadcasting rights in the Ukraine;
4. the right to short reporting1 from the perspective of the owner of exclusive rights in
Austria; and
5. ambush marketing.

A common element in each of these areas is that the convergence of various methods of
content delivery has come so rapidly in recent years that the law is at least as much in
arrears of events as many commercial industry participants. The areas, discussed in the
following five sections, consider a chronologically wide range of commercial rights from
the staging and reproduction of sporting events, to the creation of a sports league, to the
sale of tickets, to the marketing of a live event and ending with a reproduction of
highlights.
The first section, on the treatment of joint sales of sporting event tickets under EU
competition law, tracks the development of the Commission's thinking from an initial
laissez faire approach to ...