On Thursday, the ECJ upheld the European Commission's decision to approve a request from the UK and Belgium to ensure World Cup matches are blocked from being snapped up by pay-TV platforms. The UK had also asked for broadcasts of the UEFA European Championships to be protected under the same legislation.
EU rules allow member states to prohibit the exclusive broadcasting of events they judge to be of major importance to society, and the ECJ ruled that these major football competitions fall into that category, despite challenges from FIFA and UEFA.
“In those circumstances, the Court holds that the Commission did not err in finding that the United Kingdom's categorisation of all World Cup and Euro matches and Belgium's categorisation of all World Cup matches as 'events of major importance' for their societies are compatible with European Union law,” the court stated.
In a statement, UEFA said: “UEFA is disappointed to learn about today's judgement by the General Court of the European Union. UEFA will now study the decision in detail in order to decide on next steps.”
A European Commission spokeswoman claimed that several other countries had drawn up similar lists of games they wanted to reserve for free-to-air television, including Austria, Finland, France, Germany and the Republic of Ireland. Such an approach is also already used in Australia, which recently adopted a new ‘anti-siphoning’ list to prevent pay-TV broadcasters from acquiring exclusive rights to certain sporting events.
