Landlady to challenge unfair Sky Sports' subscription charges.

Greenlizard0 · 5 Oct 2010 at 15:36

BBC said:
The European Court of Justice will this week hear a landmark case brought by a Portsmouth-based pub landlord, which could change the landscape of how sports broadcasting rights are sold across Europe.

Five years ago, Karen Murphy would try to draw punters to her Portsmouth pub, The Red, White and Blue, by showing Premier League football matches on the pub TV.

However, she found the monthly subscription to Sky Sports increasingly unaffordable - pubs can pay more than £1,000 a month.

Instead, she found a cheaper means of screening English football - a subscription to a Greek satellite broadcaster, NOVA. This imported satellite card was around one 10th of the cost Karen was paying to BSkyB.

Source.

This is interesting, if previous precedent has shown she won't win - and once again, a landlord will be punished for showing football games using means other than the rights' owning broadcaster. For example :

Stephen Gerrard* of FACT said:
"Our aim is to help create an effective deterrent to publicans who endeavour to fraudulently show Sky content on their premises.

"As numerous cases have shown, we successfully pursue and prosecute dishonest licensees, who then face substantial fines, court costs and a criminal record."

*lol

Source.

I'm sort of undecided about this.

Is this slightly draconian? Sure larger pubs and chains like Weatherspoons may easily be able to afford it but what about smaller pubs? The law is clear, and at the moment it says if you can't afford to show football legally, then you don't have permission to show it at all. With this current status quo and resultant punishments are smaller businesses finding it unfairly tough where football may offer a necessary and substantial amount of income? I can understand Sky issuing a 'one of all' fee, but is £1000 rather over the top and should smaller establishments be able to perhaps negotiate a smaller one?

Don't forget why the Premier League was created - purely on the back of potential tv rights. The EPL totally changed football in England, within a few years so much money flowed through it that players were offered massive contracts until we're at the point that after a certain age you can presume that any mindless thug (haw...) is a multi-millionaire.

This has left a lot of fans bitter - not everybody can afford a Sky Sports package. The higher wages has caused clubs themselves to seek other methods of revenue, and so e.g. ticket and shirt prices etc. have sky rocketed. This caused a lot of fans to be priced out of the game in general and there's currently a sense of alienation. It's left a situation where we have pubs using other means to show games, and why of course for the individual user at home, well.., a quick google reveals that there are streams available, or so I hear.

I think the lady herself and her analogy is a fair point. A car company wouldn't be allowed to create a legally binding contract where it had sole access to a particular market why should a tv company be any different? Is the analogy not quite akin to that, or is Sky (with the backing of the EPL, UEFA, FIFA etc.) being plain greedy? Keeping on cars, should we wish to purchase one from abroad, anybody may register, drive and use it in the UK can we not?

On the other hand, the rules have been made law. Sky are allowed to broadcast the majority of matches available outside the 3:00pm Sat time, (currently with ESPN taking a few as well). The Premier League has the rights for this, and has offered bids for a contract to those two aforementioned companies with the premise of course that they only may broadcast in England. This of course will help those companies themselves recoup some money back by then selling advertisement or sponsorship, 'Live Super Sunday sponsored by Ford' comes into mind. The car company themselves will be paying a lot of money. So all in all interests are being protected.

The English subscription is a lot more expensive than the Greek one she wanted to pay for. However companies always vary their fees according to the market in question, and then adjust it further due to e.g. taxes etc. England is Sky's largest market and Greece is just a smaller, cheaper and less lucrative market.

However there too has been a lot of 'rip off Britain' talk in the last few years, again are Sky being extortionate and is the lady trying to counter this? There's been a bit of media attention, so it's a possible sign that people are very interested in the outcome, or will that in the end be predictable, and she'll lose. Or will, as the title of the Beeb article suggests, a whole sale change within football be allowed to commence?

Tombstone · 5 Oct 2010 at 19:13

Cant really say that it bothers me to be honest. I do think that £1000 is a touch steep maybe, but then thats the price , thats the deal, so take it or leave it.

Its really no different to anything else, BBC have the rights to show formula one live in England, if a smaller channel started doing an offer where you could watch live formula one, the BBC would be up in arms about it too. Same applies to pretty much every form of business where a company has sole rights to something.

(I should add that I watch Sky at home and not in Pubs so that might also be part of the reason why it doesnt bother me)

jakeke · 5 Oct 2010 at 19:35

I think Sky are drastically over charging and it's very unfair on smaller businesses. Pubs are suffering at the moment and now they need £1000/month just to attract the football watching crowd. It is extortionate

nicktay2605 · 5 Oct 2010 at 20:49

A flat rate cost to all pubs does seem unfair, £1000 a month is a lot for a small pub that might only see something like a 10% rise in customers due to showing football. It would seem more sensible to charge each pub based on a combination of their square footage space and footfall. Still, if Sky can charge that much and most landlords still pay, I can't see why they would change any time soon. Also, if my local is anything to go by, showing football brings a lot more punters through the door and therefore increases revenue drastically. I would have thought the cost to Sky is generally outweighed by the increased revenue.

One More Solo · 5 Oct 2010 at 21:01

She makes some interesting arguments though about the EU and so on, I don't think any of it will stand up in court though.

daz · 5 Oct 2010 at 21:45

The main issue will be that if she wins, TV rights will in future be negotiated on a EU-wide basis, meaning even less competition for the massive contract to provide Premier League football to all of Europe.

BSkyB will push their monopoly further and will probably be able to charge more than what they're charging now.

MissChief · 5 Oct 2010 at 22:48

I hate to say it but Sky also broadcast to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the ROI as well!

Greenlizard0 · 5 Oct 2010 at 23:19

Aye, but I think it's the EPL matches that are the issue.

a1ex2001 · 6 Oct 2010 at 14:02

It's a tricky one and the European Single Market approach she is taking is an interesting one, I can see her argument for restriction of trade but I don't think she has a cat in hells chance of winning.

As a more general comment I can't wait for this football bubble to burst so we can have our national game back for the fans and not the big business and greedy players which it currently serves so disgustingly.

Greenlizard0 · 6 Oct 2010 at 14:10

Aye, there's a massive reason why a lot of fans and players have a club over country stance. The EPL and Champ's League have really undermined international football.

mmj_uk · 6 Oct 2010 at 14:51

She claims by restricting her choice of satellite TV providers to a single broadcaster - BSkyB - the Premier League contravenes European Union principles of free movement of goods and services between member states of the EU.

Good luck to her, corporations that get too big always end up monopolising like this without government intervention.

If her winning has a negative impact on the EPL then so be it, maybe the league will come back down to earth and we'll see more homegrown talent.

daz · 6 Oct 2010 at 15:24

mmj_uk said:
Good luck to her, corporations that get too big always end up monopolising like this without government intervention.

If the case rules in her favour, and people are allowed to choose their satellite provider, the the FAPL will not in future license on a country by country basis in the EU, but will instead charge everyone the same to close the loophole.

a1ex2001 · 11 Oct 2010 at 16:06

daz said:
If the case rules in her favour, and people are allowed to choose their satellite provider, the the FAPL will not in future license on a country by country basis in the EU, but will instead charge everyone the same to close the loophole.

Which would loose them a massive amount of money as the only reason a lot of people in Europe have subscriptions to watch the premiership is because they are so cheap, your not going to get a bunch of Romanians paying British subscription charges.

reefoid · 11 Oct 2010 at 16:17

nicktay2605 said:
A flat rate cost to all pubs does seem unfair, £1000 a month is a lot for a small pub that might only see something like a 10% rise in customers due to showing football.

I'm pretty sure that its not a flat rate, I think its worked out on the value of rates on the premises. Still not cheap though.

THFC · 16 Oct 2010 at 17:41

a1ex2001 said:
It's a tricky one and the European Single Market approach she is taking is an interesting one, I can see her argument for restriction of trade but I don't think she has a cat in hells chance of winning.

As a more general comment I can't wait for this football bubble to burst so we can have our national game back for the fans and not the big business and greedy players which it currently serves so disgustingly.

It is tricky as we can go elsewhere in europe and buy goods cheaper. She is not a pirate, and has paid for a subscription but through a non Uk country but at a far cheaper rate.

Okay Sky makes up it's own rulse and pricing policies - she may have breached these but under EU Law has she done anything wrong.

Psycho Sonny · 16 Oct 2010 at 19:35

nicktay2605 said:
A flat rate cost to all pubs does seem unfair, £1000 a month is a lot for a small pub that might only see something like a 10% rise in customers due to showing football. It would seem more sensible to charge each pub based on a combination of their square footage space and footfall. Still, if Sky can charge that much and most landlords still pay, I can't see why they would change any time soon. Also, if my local is anything to go by, showing football brings a lot more punters through the door and therefore increases revenue drastically. I would have thought the cost to Sky is generally outweighed by the increased revenue.

do you have any idea how hard it is to make £1000 of "profit" these days in any form of business when you are small?

lets say a pub's profit margin is 10%, in order for the pub to actually make a better profit from showing sky sports, they would have to gain at least £10,000 worth of sales directly from showing football every month.

Gone are the days pub used to make 25+% profit margin, it is now substantially low. Take costs such as "rates" (this can be many thousands per month), Tax, electricity (also extremely expensive), gas (cheap compared to the main 2 but still a big bill), refurbishment,, wages, etc into account and you can see why the profit margin is so low..

then take note of how large chains can haggle huge discounts from breweries due to economies of scale (wetherspoons for example will probably pay half the price for a keg that a small pub pays for).

im glad i dont own a pub, but my family has in the past and i was shocked when i heard how expensive the sky bill was.

Psycho Sonny · 16 Oct 2010 at 19:43

a1ex2001 said:
It's a tricky one and the European Single Market approach she is taking is an interesting one, I can see her argument for restriction of trade but I don't think she has a cat in hells chance of winning.

As a more general comment I can't wait for this football bubble to burst so we can have our national game back for the fans and not the big business and greedy players which it currently serves so disgustingly.

the bubble will never burst i dont think, unless people stop subscribing to sky due to how expensive it is. seeing as they have a monopoly over the worlds most popular sport i dont see that happening.

on another note, how come the world cup was on bbc and itv? is it because the players dont get paid to play in the world cup (usually such a small fee goes towards them its almost as if they play for free)?

i think all tv should be free to air if it has adverts on it, and you should have to pay for the channels which do not advertise. therefore 99.9% of channels should be free.

Tombstone · 16 Oct 2010 at 20:35

Psycho Sonny said:
the bubble will never burst i dont think, unless people stop subscribing to sky due to how expensive it is. seeing as they have a monopoly over the worlds most popular sport i dont see that happening.

You're certainly right there, theres absolutely no way I am giving up my sky subscription.

Psycho Sonny said:
on another note, how come the world cup was on bbc and itv? is it because the players dont get paid to play in the world cup (usually such a small fee goes towards them its almost as if they play for free)?

I think it might be one of those "heritage" things, like the Grand National. Shame though as I reckon the coverage from Sky would have been a damn sight better than the pitiful standard of the world cup coverage from the BBC/ITV was this year. At the very least Sky should have been allowed to show the world cup as well as BBC/ITV

THFC · 16 Oct 2010 at 20:49

Surely the point is -

Nobody has to give up Sky

All this Lady has done is subscribe to Sky from outside the UK but then use it in the UK.

She may have upset Sky but so what - surely she is entitled to shop around within the EU

I too would not give up Sky - but if i could legally buy any EU Sky subscription legally cheaper for the same service I would contemplate it

Tombstone · 16 Oct 2010 at 21:04

THFC said:
Surely the point is -

Nobody has to give up Sky

All this Lady has done is subscribe to Sky from outside the UK but then use it in the UK.

She may have upset Sky but so what - surely she is entitled to shop around within the EU

I too would not give up Sky - but if i could legally buy any EU Sky subscription legally cheaper for the same service I would contemplate it

Hang on, no thats not right she didnt subscribe to Sky from outside the UK, she subscribed to Nova, the greek satellite company. They dont show Sky channels on Nova, they have different sports channel which show English football.

(at least if we're talking about the Portsmouth pub landlady).