Europe to protect major sporting events

THE European Commission is proposing new broadcasting regulations to ensure that sports fans will be able to see major events on free channels.

The move, announced yesterday by the Commissioner for Audio Visual Affairs, Mr Marcelino Oreja, will come in the form of an amendment to the Television Without Frontiers directive currently going through conciliation procedures with the European Parliament.

Mr Oreja said it was proposed that owners of exclusive rights to named major events such as the soccer World Cup would not be allowed to broadcast such events in scrambled form on a pay per view basis.

The Commission is proposing broad guidelines for defining such major events, but argues that the choice of a list for each country and Europe wide should be left to the member states. Its role will simply be to ensure that the named events meet the guidelines.

Mr Oreja said he "hoped the Commission has struck a good balance between the right to information and the interests of TV broadcasters and sports clubs and the rules of free competition". He said the move applied only to the exercise of the exclusive broadcasting rights to an event, not to its purchase.

If agreed by culture ministers and MEPs, which is almost certain, the proposal will mean significant losses to companies which have already bought up rights to sporting events in advance. But Mr Oreja said that no right was unlimited and that they had to take account of the guarantee of the right to information provided for in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Commission's guidelines provide that events should be of "major importance to society", which take place regularly but with not too great a degree of frequency, of interest to a large part of society, and in the EU or a member state. Member states would ensure that stations broadcasting from their territory would not restrict broadcasts of events on any of the agreed national lists.

Similar provisions have already been enacted in a number of member states. In Ireland, the matter is still under review. The Minister of State for Sport, Mr Bernard Allen, has set up a working group to establish whether it is possible or desirable to block broadcasters from outside Ireland acquiring exclusive rights to transmit major sports events in Ireland.

In Britain, the 1996 Broadcasting Act lists eight protected events: the FA Cup final, the Scottish FA Cup final, the FIFA World Cup final, the Derby, the Grand National, the Olympic Games, Wimbledon, and cricket test matches involving England.