Toppling the Murdoch Empire: Could a Pub Landlady from Portsmouth help seal BSkyB’s fate?

While the News Corporation / News International phone hacking storm continues to rumble with menace, Theo Fan reports on another threat facing Rupert Murdoch, and how the fate of the televised game – and BSkyB – could rely on a pub landlady from Portsmouth:

Who will have the biggest impact on domestic football in the next 10 years? Will it be the legacy of Sir Alex or the philosophy of Wenger? Will the F.A. take a firm hold of the reins and drive the Premier League in the direction it wishes? Or will a pub landlady in Portsmouth called Karen Murphy irrevocably change the way we access the English game?

You may well have heard about the ongoing case of Ms Murphy vs. the broadcasting giant BSkyB, who are locked in a legal battle that threatens to rewrite the rulebook on how football is broadcast and distributed in the U.K. For the uninitiated here is the story so far…

Up to now

Back in January 2007, the landlady in question was found guilty of showing live Premier League games “illegally” in her pub, the Red, White and Blue in Southsea, and ordered to pay almost £8,000 in fines and legal costs. The reason for the inverted commas around illegal will become clear as matters become murkier.

Not exactly thrilled with Portsmouth Magistrates Court’s ruling Ms Murphy has since taken her case through the lengthy battle of a legal appeal and has found herself in front of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). It seems she means business.

Whilst all this essentially began with Ms Murphy’s decision to end her costly subscription to Sky Sports and instead receive live Premier League games via Greek broadcaster NOVA for the far cheaper price of £800 (or about 280 pints of lager) per month, the possible implications this case could have on televised football in the U.K. are huge.

Being the world’s most watched sporting league the Premier League commands revenue figures in the billions. And with the rise of England’s top flight and Sky so inextricably linked, their fates are similarly bound together.

With the ECJ opting to utilise a Grand Chamber of 13 judges to deal with this legal dogfight rather than the often seen 3 or 5, their assessment of the significance of the case is clear. But what impact will their eventual ruling have on the way we view football here in the U.K.?

What next?

It seems unlikely, if not impossible, that the end result of this case will be nothing more than Karen Murphy getting a particularly hefty Sky bill whilst all else carries on unchanged. With the latest development in this saga being the submission of Advocate General Juliane Kokott’s non-binding opinion comes the clarification that this case is now addressing a new point of EU law. The fact that her opinion basically states that she believes Sky’s current television rights deal directly clashes with the fundamental EU principle of a single European market is more than a touch significant.

The number of possible ramifications of this case is truly endless and based on so many variables that no single individual can yet accurately determine the most likely outcome to this story. But the general consensus, based on everything from economic principles to outright gut predictions, seems to suggest that football in the U.K. may about to become more affordable for the average punter.

Great News?

With the soaring price of match day tickets a perennial issue in the modern English game, re-opening football to those who have been essentially priced out of attendance in recent years can surely only be considered a positive. But what impact could this have on the standard of the Premier League?

The Premier League, in perennial pursuit of “Greatest League in the World” status, has become reliant on wringing every ounce of profit out of the fans. As it stands, any drop in ticket prices not balanced out by a relevant boost in attendance could, it seems, critically damage the attractiveness and overall success of the league itself.

What about the bloke who prefers a couple of cans and a takeaway pizza on the sofa with his game instead of a watery coffee and an overpriced hotdog in the stands? If this case forced Sky to abide by single market EU laws then his subscription price may well drop. Great news for him and a large portion of football fans in Britain. But has Sky’s greed over the years, with their prices steadily increasing and their dominance in the UK market giving football-hungry consumers little choice but to go along with the parade, inextricably tied their own future to the future of the English game?

With the Premier League television rights for 2010-13 valued at a cool £1.8 billion and each of the 20 clubs receiving an estimated £40 million piece of this pie per year, any reduction in subscription charges paid by the public could significantly reduce this vital source of income for the clubs that keep the League lucrative. A negative knock-on effect on the league as the global brand it has become would only be inevitable.

A long way still to go…

As already pointed out the list of scary potential consequences of Karen Murphy’s case is little more than attempted clairvoyance, and may well be a million miles from the eventual outcome. However, one thing that remains certain is that the resolution of this legal battle with Sky will have a profound role in the future of televised football in this country, and the fallout is likely to be felt throughout the sport.

Theo Fan is a contributor to Just Football and can be found on Twitter @TheFootball_Fan

(Photo credit: Rob Warde via Flickr)

English Premier League, Football and Finance, Politics and Society, The Media