Time To Hand Football Back To The Fans

This week a potential landmark court case will be heard over the issue of sports broadcasting rights. The issue surrounds a Portsmouth landlady who, in a bid to tackle rising costs, removed Sky Sports from her pub and replaced it with a European-based viewing card. As this is in breach of broadcasting rights, she has taken her 'freedom of trade' argument all the way to the European Court of Justice in a bid to secure fairer rights for all.

Sky paid £1.8 billion for exclusive broadcasting rights to the Premier League and it's understandable that these costs are now being passed onto the consumer. In a typical large-ish pub, the owner would expect up to 200+ customers on the afternoon of a big game. Compared to a typical household of 4 people then there is a significant increase in viewers from one source.

Sky's massive investment since the start of the Premier League in 1992 has pushed English football into a different era. For a long time they have monopolised the English market whereas their foreign counterparts don't. European broadcasters have no issues with their cards being used outside of a certain territory and this creates problems for Sky in particular.

However, it is about time someone stood up for the football fan in this country. Fans of other top flight teams around Europe can watch their team either on terrestrial or accessible satellite television but if they choose to attend games then they don't pay half their mortgage for a match-day ticket.

As a fan of a lower-league football club, I have never really been affected by multi-million pound contracts stopping me from watching my team. For a supporter of a Premiership side this could be the start of a whole new phenomenon. Let's hope for the sake of football in this country that we can start to watch world-class football at an acceptable, affordable price. Actually scratch that - why can't we go back to the 1960s when (in football terms certainly) everything was well with the world: World Champions, an open First Division championship and a world in which a defender could make a proper sliding tackle...

For more sports stories like this visit my sports blog at http://sportingtommytrebski.blogspot.com/