World Crisis Online

European countries are entitled to ban the exclusive airing of World Cup and European football championship games on pay-TV in order to allow wider public viewing on free channels, one of Europe’s top courts has ruled.

The ruling is a blow for Fifa, which organises the World Cup finals, and Uefa, which handles the European Football Championship finals. Both organisations depend heavily on the sale of broadcasting rights for much of their income and had challenged the extent to which games had to be shown more widely.

But on Thursday the General Court in Luxembourg slapped down their arguments and ruled in favour of Belgium and the UK, which had included games organised by Fifa or Uefa on their lists of events they considered to be “of major importance” to society and so entitled to wider audiences.

The UK cited both World Cup and European championship games, while Belgium focused on the World Cup only.

In arriving at its decision, the court dismissed the Fifa/Uefa argument that some of the games in the two championships could be regarded as of lesser importance and so treated differently. It held that certain “non-prime” or “non-gala” matches could still affect whether a team advanced to the more important stages of the competition and so could justify a country’s decision to consider that all of the matches in the competition were of “major importance to society”.

It also looked at viewing figures from the most recent events, and concluded that even the less significant games had drawn large numbers of viewers, “a significant proportion of whom are not usually interested in football”.

In addition, the court pointed out that although the airing of games on free channels was liable to affect the price Fifa and Uefa would get for the broadcasting rights, it did not destroy the commercial value of those rights.

The two organisations can still appeal against the decision to the European Court of Justice itself, although such appeals can only be brought on points of law.