The Politics of Sports Rights

Abstract

This article examines the regulation of television sports rights in the UK. Since around the mid-1990s, UK government attempts to regulate the ownership of sports rights have centred on two significant policy initiatives: first, the reforming of legislation designed to ensure certain sporting or national events remain accessible to all television viewers — the listed events legislation; and second, the more rigorous application of competition policy principles to the selling of Premier League football rights, largely in an effort to reduce the market power of the dominant pay-TV broadcaster, BSkyB. The main object of this article is to consider each of these policy initiatives in turn and to highlight how the UK government’s approach to the regulation of sports rights has been shaped by changes to both the television industry and the nature of UK public policy making more generally.