The EU – and particularily the European Court of Justice (ECJ) – often gets a lot of stick. There’s a number of reasons for this. The decisions they make are technically binding on national governments – a recent example of this is the government having their hand forced to give convicted criminals the right to vote (as I write this, they are yet to concede this one). However, when called upon they can sometimes get you out of trouble – as one landlady has shown. Karen Murphy is a landlady from the UK. She got busted by the rozzers for showing Premier League games in her pub using an imported viewing card from Greece. At this point, I want to stress – it is still against UK law to show Premier League games in the UK with a foreign viewing card. So don’t do it.

Karen wasn’t happy with the £8,000 fine slapped on her by magistrates, so decided to take her case to the ECJ and tell the chaps there that showing games in the UK using a foreign viewing card is OK. Now, the case is still in progress, but a leading advisor to the court has given a pretty strong hint that she believes what Karen is saying. She is quoted as saying: “The exclusivity agreement relating to transmission of football matches is contrary to European Union law”.

Previously, the Premier League has had individual distribution rights in the various European countries and has charged the individual broadcasters accordingly. Obviously, distributors in Greece will pay significantly less than distributors in the UK. And for a while, each individual country would show Premier League games and the world was a nice, sweet and rosy place. Then some people thought to themselves – “why don’t I slap a Greek viewing card in my box and watch the Premier League?”. So, people brought Greek viewing cards, put them in their boxes and the world was still a nice, sweet and rosy place. However, the Premier League found out about this and got upset. So they started rocking up and down the country and fining people who were using these cards in the name of copyright/media property theft. However, the key to this all is the nature of European Single Market. If you want a nice big Sony TV, you can quite happily pop on a ferry over to Amsterdam, buy a tele and bring it home. This was one of the founding principles of the European Economic Community. So, the question exists – if you want to watch TV in Greece, what’s stopping you from buying it in to watch in the UK.

This, my friends, is where the ECJ advisor (the Advocate General) is on Karen’s side. As far as the AG is concerned, it is contrary to EU law to impose sanctions on the purchase of goods from other European Countries. This will make the Premier League sad. They charged Sky (well, BSkyB) around £1.8 billion last year for the rights to Premier League. Although that sounds like a lot, they raked back almost double that in subscriptions. So what is the Premier League going to do about it? It has a few options.

By far the worst of these is to simply discontinue broadcasting games in the rest of Europe. This is unlikely, but not impossible. If you imagine that Sky paid £1.8 billion for the UK rights. If the opening up of European viewing leads to Sky being massively undercut (and hence, refusing to pay such ridiculous amounts), then it may make financial sense to cut off the rest of Europe and safeguard the crazy money that Sky currently pay for the UK. They’re unlikely to follow this route – it would upset everyone in Europe who’s become accustomed to watching the English Premier League on a Saturday afternoon. Furthermore, the Premier League does make some income from these countries – many of these fans don’t watch the Premier League because there is nothing better to do. A lot of them are fans and may spend money on replica shirts, merchandise, perhaps tickets to a final.

Another option is to have one single provider for the whole of Europe. So, one company that owns the rights to the Premier League across the entire European Union. This will enable European Broadcasters to continue to show Prem games on a Saturday. However, you can bet your bottom dollar that it won’t be cheap. And importantly, as a sole provider it may well be possible for them to place clauses on the rights. For instance, they may speculate that you must not sell viewing cards outside of your home nation. There are questions about enforceability of such clauses, but the main point about a single rights holder is that they are unlikely to let the games go cheap.

Should the ECJ accept the AG’s viewpoint, then this ruling would have a profound effect on Football. Any reduction in TV revenues is likely to hit a lot of clubs in the pocket. Does this mean an end to insane transfer prices or extremely high wages?

Who knows. In fact, none of us know really – the ECJ could well reject the AG’s opinion. It’s happened before – the Justices in the ECJ don’t always go with the word of the AG. In which case, the Premier League can breathe a relative sign of relief. Even if the ECJ do accept the viewpoint of the AG, it still has to be enacted in law by courts in the UK. You can also expect appeals, complaints, judicial reviews and the like as the big boys get the wallets out and try to buy themselves some breathing space from the ECJ using lawyers whose salaries would make football players blush.

So, will you be watching the Premier League in the pub at 3pm next season? If you are, then be aware it’s probably still going to be illegal. It may take some time to get the ruling and push it through the courts and the rest of the judiciary. The ECJ itself is expected to take a good few months to come to a decision. Until then, it looks like those who show games using these foreign viewing cards are playing dangerously.