Title: The Legal Nature Of Premium Sports Events: ‘IP or Not IP — That Is The Question’
Abstract: 1. Introduction Revenue from distribution of the media rights to premium sports events is the largest source (1) of funding for professional sports clubs and leagues. (2) Traditionally there were five major forms of broadcasting (3) of these events: free-to-air television TV, pay-TV, radio rights, streaming over the Internet and [sub.3]G mobile phones services. The situation is changing rapidly (4) due to technological development, which removes existing borderlines between media-platforms. Digitisation substantially decreases the entrance barriers for new media actors. Couchman and Harrington (5) for instance provide a new classification of these platforms, with the view of their following enhancement, fragmentation and convergence: free to air TV; pay-TV; pay-per-view TV; enhanced TV; interactive TV; video; other fixed media, e.g. CDROM, DVD etc.; video on demand; Internet (including broadband); radio; wireless telephony (WAP, SMS, [sub.3]G); telephony (DSL, ADSL). Such diversification allows realisation of sports media rights in a much more refined way, or as Fisher (6) eloquently suggests, 'in many ways, the marriage between the professional sports industry and the emerging new media technologies has been a textbook example of mutually beneficial synergy'. This 'mutually beneficial marriage', in particular, reinforces creativity in sports industry, facilitates the establishment of new forms of media content from those sports events, which previously have been seen as homogeneous and undividable broadcasting products. Inasmuch as a value of sports media rights is rising up exponentially, the same occur with the importance of a proper defining of their economic status and legal regulation. There is a consensual agreement that the broadcast of sports event constitute a copyrighted work. In the EC it is protected inter alia by InfoSoc Directive, (7) while in the US there is a special amendment to the Clayton Act, (8) commonly known as Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. (9) In the context of new media, the violation of copyright might have a form of unauthorized or circumvented access to the media platform, which broadcasts the event, using without permission the direct hyperlink (10) to the online broadcast or applying for the purpose of webpage's access login or password information, received without permission of the holder/transferred to another person without concern of right owner. The focal point of the discussion about the nature of sports media rights is in the qualifying of the moment, starting from which a broadcasting of sports event receives its copyright protection. In other words: 'can an event itself be protected by copyright law, or it is only its broadcast, which receives its intellectual property law protection?' If the former is the case, then sports media rights would be protected much more rigidly. This, consequently would reinforce their commercial value, increase revenue of the holders of those rights and stimulate long-term strategic investment in the industry. On the other hand, if sports media rights are protected only as broadcasting rights, it would give the incentives to the competitors of the exclusive operators, to seek the ways of exploitation of sports event, by creating an alternative content, which might be of interest to particular segments of audience. This situation would be positive for the invention of new formats of sports media rights exploitation. It will foster technological innovation in the industry by introducing advanced formats of premium sports media content. Inasmuch as those two positions are mutually exclusive, there is a tendency to consider the tension between them in terms of a zero-sum-game relationship. A winner in the doctrinal battle on a definition of legal nature of sports media rights is likely to get most if not all commercial revenue within the sector. …
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 3
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