Broadcasting rights

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Broadcasting rights is the term for the right of a sports organizer to the video or sound recordings of a sports event.

definition

The terms “television rights”, “radio rights”, “marketing rights” and “recording rights” are also used in the literature, and the shortened term “broadcasting rights” is often used in public (but also in literature).

These rights play a major role economically, as they are sold to television broadcasters for large sums of money. Despite this strong economic importance, many related legal issues have only just begun to be clarified, so the topic is very fluid.

Broadcast rights in football

A well-known example of broadcast rights is football; There, the English league will receive around 2.2 billion euros per year from next season, while the Bundesliga currently only receives 800 million euros per year. One reason for this is that 2 pay-TV providers in England are fighting over the broadcasting rights, which led to the price being driven up. Another reason is that many more people in England are willing to pay extra for television.

The DFL is currently in negotiations with license buyers from the individual television companies and is hoping for min. 1.1 billion euros.

Additional rights are granted for the broadcasting of summaries and transmissions on the Internet.

Legal situation in Germany

In German law (unlike in Brazil and France ), there are no independent (i.e. specifically defined by law) television rights to sporting events. This is also the reason why there is no fixed legal term for this right (see the titles cited below). It can therefore happen that "broadcasting rights" etc. are understood to mean something different in individual cases, such as the broadcasting rights to a non-sporting event.

The Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) decided that the organizer generally has protection against television recordings by unauthorized persons , with the argument that if the organizer had no protection, he would be restricted in his freedom to exercise his profession (Art. 12 of the Basic Law ). The legislature also assumed that such a right existed in Section 31 GWB ( Act against Restraints of Competition ). This controversial § 31 GWB (which came about under pressure from the sports lobby ) only stated, as an exception to the general ban on cartels , that centralized marketing of broadcasting rights by a sports association (e.g. DFB ; UEFA ) does not violate the ban on cartels. The legislature has left to jurisprudence exactly what the rights are . Section 31 GWB ceased to be in force with the 7th GWB amendment on July 1, 2005.

According to the unanimous view of the legal literature , the civil law reason for this protection lies in the fact that, in the case of "television rights", the organizer can claim that the sale of the recording of such an event by someone who has not contributed to the success of this event is a violation of this fair competition. Such a violation is inadmissible under the law against unfair competition (UWG). Exactly how far the protection extends and who exactly is the "organizer" with what proportion (the clubs, the league, the bearer of the direct financial risk) is still a matter of legal discussion.

In addition, the organizer can take action against television recordings of sporting events by invoking his house rules if the house rules have been violated, i.e. if the recorder has entered the organizer's property. The Federal Court of Justice decided in 2005 that this also applies to radio reporters ("radio rights"); the Federal Constitutional Court has been appealed against this decision .

literature

  • Michael Siegfried: The television coverage of sporting events , Munich 1990.
  • Hermann Waldhauser: The television rights of the sports organizer , Berlin 1999.
  • Wolf GH Günther: Extent and civil law limitation of admission rights to sporting events , Würzburg 2003.

On the issue of antitrust law

  • Martin Stopper: League Sports and Antitrust Law , Konstanz 1996.
  • Tanja Carolina Jessen: Legal issues relating to the marketing of sporting events in German and English law , Aachen 1997.
  • Markus Kuczera: The Marketing of Broadcasting Rights in Football According to German and European Antitrust Law , 2004.

On Swiss law

  • Simon Osterwalder: Broadcasting rights to sporting events , Bern and Munich 2004.

Individual evidence

  1. Bundeskartellamt : Exceptional Areas of Antitrust Law - Status and Perspectives of the 7th Amendment to the GWB, p. 19ff. ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 522 kB), accessed on May 9, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundeskartellamt.de