Licensee "can't afford" to fight Premier League over new foreign football TV crackdown
Mark Jones, of the Robin Hood pub near Old Trafford football ground, was facing a civil case that could have cost him £150,000, a sum he said he simply couldn’t afford.
He was one of the licensees targeted last year by the FAPL’s representatives DLA Piper, which asked pubs to agree to a range of measures in order to avoid legal action.
The High Court has issued an injunction against Jones who has agreed to provide the FAPL with full details of the foreign satellite equipment he used, including when and where he purchased it.
“I think if I had said I was going to fight this, it (the FAPL) may have crumbled,” said Jones.
“However, it wasn’t worth the risk for us as the legal costs could have run as high as £150,000, and we simply couldn’t have afforded that. It is too much money to lose.”
Andy Grimsey, partner at licensing law firm Poppleston Allen, suggested the FAPL was “going for the jugular” by “concentrating on the narrow issue of copyright and, in particular, the graphics and logo”. He added: “Licensees planning to fight these new claims will need deep pockets and good lawyers. Whether even that will be enough remains to be seen.”
Rebecca Swindells, partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse, said: “It is obviously a concern if licensees are automatically submitting to the Premier League’s demands without considering potential defences due to the fact that they simply cannot afford the legal fees of running a defence.”
She suggested that licensees could ask that claims be brought in the Patents County Court, instead of the High Court, which she said is “cheaper and quicker”.
Licensing expert Peter Coulson added: “Individual publicans simply can’t afford to fight civil claims on a level such as this, unless they have sufficient support.”
A spokesperson for the FAPL said: “This case shows that pubs that have misunderstood the consequences of the Karen Murphy judgment are at risk of civil claims. We remind all publicans that Sky and ESPN are the only authorised broadcasters of live Premier League matches in the UK and that legal action will be taken against those who use unauthorised systems and cards to show live Premier League matches in a pub or other commercial premises.”
Meanwhile, Paul Dixon, the lawyer who represented Murphy in her long-running case with the FAPL, is understood to be acting for a number of licensees in other very similar civil cases, although the details cannot be disclosed.
