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Research On The Legal Protection Issues Of The Sports TV Broadcasting Rights

Posted on:2011-03-29Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:L LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2167360305457517Subject:Law
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Sports TV rights is introduced in the first part. Along with the rising of concept, we claim that the most typical developing example of the flourishing Olympics is sports TV rights. Before the Melbourne Olympic Games (1958), Olympic TV rights was included in the Olympic Charter by the International Olympic Committee, who were going through economic difficulties. At that time, the concept of Sports TV Rights was brought forward and clarified the properties for the first time. It is generally considered that the TV sports rights means the rights of sports organizations or game organizers to authorize other organizations executing live, broadcast, and video, and get payment from them when games and presentations are holding.The attitude of the sports relatively developed countries to the characters of sports TV rights is inconsistent. In the U.S., TV rights is commonly regarded as kind of properties. A non issued broadcast will be charged guilty, because such behaviors may indirectly decrease the income of game organizers. The laws of the British see no difference from media to audience. They are all receivers of entertainment, just dissimilar ways to receive. In the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, the sports TV rights are considered as a business right, because the competition organizers are responsible to organization and finance, so the organizers have the right to possess the rights. The situations are different in France. The laws make the existence of sports TV rights clear, and divided it from the simple News rights. It has to be pointed out that both German and French considered that if the competition is conducted in public places, anyone may shoot and broadcast competitions under the permissions of the government. This implies that competitions in public places will be broadcast with no TV rights problems. Our point is, sports TV rights belongs to the range of Property Law, because as a non physical property, TV rights is ability of game organizers or participated clubs to win market share and profit, and the concept of thing is becoming more and more wide. So, to make TV rights convert from commercial to legal by bring it into the range of Property Law, will be benefit to the clarity and stability of related laws.On the problem of who owns the sports TV rights, the provisions of various countries are different. The European Commission considers that for a football match, both clubs are the owners of broadcast rights. UEFA claims their own commercial rights, which means at least the co-owners, and the European Commission has raised no objection. The court in the U.S. judge broadcast rights to the club's owner. The U.K. considers that though a specific game itself have entertainment value itself, it needs to be combined with the League, so this football entertainment services provider should be both host and guest club, but also the Premier League. In the Netherlands and Italy, all the TV rights are owned by sports clubs. According to German jurisprudence and doctrine through the courts, the owner of sports television rights is the competition organizers. Under the French law, the French Football Federation has been designated as the French league's TV rights holders only. The author believes that sports TV rights should be owned by the clubs for all, but the modern professional sports leagues have become a corporate and take some business risks. Therefore to recognize clubs and sports leagues are joint owners of broadcast rights is reasonable.The second part discusses international protection of sports TV rights. Detailed description of the Europe and the U.S. professional league TV rights sales model and broadcast contract relief are presented. Europe and the U.S. professional league have a variety of modes in the transfer of TV rights, including a focus on sales, exclusive agreements, combining with an exclusive focus on the sale agreement, limiting the number of games broadcast, and collective purchasing. As mentioned before, European Soccer League TV rights has always been adopted as the organizer of the Union League Club, on behalf of the entire season as a whole sale. Except for to strengthen the alliance between the club and its control over the game, its aims are also to ensure that the level and finances of the club's will not be widened, in order to maintain the level and attractiveness of the entire league. For the exclusive agreement, professional sports leagues usually sign exclusive contracts by region with a particular radio and TV station, and authorize the radio and TV station to do the exclusive broadcast of the games in this particular area, while other radio and television stations having no right to broadcast. In the business practice of sales to sports TV rights, exclusive agreement and selling are often combined, that is to say, Professional Sports League sold the league game TV rights to one media only in a particular region. The exclusive sports TV rights sold on the market lead to scarcity and expensive which is beyond the purchasing power of many television stations. Therefore, these television networks hope to get broadcast rights from collective strength. Moreover, even if some TV stations are able to buy broadcast rights alone, higher market risk or the fact that one television broadcast can not independently maximize the commercial value of the development of competition, will also promote its consideration and purchase of broadcast rights with other competitors, in order to reduce the risks and take more efficient use of resources.Sports Broadcasting Rights is usually achieved through contract. The dispute resolution to the contract of Sports Broadcasting Rights is generally agreed well by the two sides before the dispute. If no such agreements with the two sides, unless the arbitration agreements reached afterwards, otherwise, the courts generally have jurisdiction to resolve. In today's actual operation to the sports TV rights transfer, once there is some dispute, it will usually be resolved by the following means:(a) Sports Association bylaws; (b) Arbitration System; (c) Court proceedings.The third part analyses the legal protected status of Sports League TV rights, taking the Chinese Super League, for example, and propose a number of proposals to legal protection of China's sports TV rights. In the present practice, whether the Chinese Football Association, clubs, the TV stations, and other news media, often consider broadcast rights equal to copyright, even resulted in some national copyright, local copyright, production copyright, etc. vague irregular language. Similarly, there is no clear ownership of broadcast rights. In the previously formulated National Football League Team Charter by Football Association, the provisions of Article 22 rules that League Football Association is television rights ownership, national broadcasting and foreign broadcasting is transfered by Chinese Football Association's responsibility. TV broadcasting for all regions are authorized by the local television transfered from the Chinese Football Association home club. It provides that the ownership of broadcast rights belongs to League Chinese Football Association, and the clubs have no broadcast rights. Even for sale, it has to be authorized by Chinese Football Association. Based on the foregoing Company the Right to Say theory, Monopoly of broadcast rights for the Chinese Football Association is clearly lack of reasonable basis. The clubs are the broadcasting rights owner, and the Chinese Football Association can only be a common owner to the broadcast right. However, actually the Chinese Football Association, the clubs, and television stations have no arguments on ownership to the broadcasting rights. There are rarely openly disagreements on the provisions of the Football Association Super League clubs that they have broadcasting rights. The reason author is concerned is that first, China's economic level is relatively low, so Football League's appeal is not enough. Pay-TV industry is not developed enough, so the value of broadcast rights itself can not cause sufficient degree of attention from the clubs. According to the above problems, the author puts forward the following four proposals:(a) Delete Sports Law, Article 31, paragraph 3, to decouple between the Government and professional clubs, and to complete the commercialization of sports; (b) Clarify the ownership of sports TV rights, to strengthen the sports TV rights legal protection; (c) Develop specialized sports broadcasting law; (d) Establish a sound system of arbitration for sport.
Keywords/Search Tags:Sport Events, TV Broadcasting, Legal Protection
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