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This article has been tagged since March 2007. Football DataCo Ltd is a British company in the football (soccer) industry that grants licences to third parties (such as newspapers) allowing them to reproduce certain intellectual property (such as fixture lists and statisitics) owned by the FA Premier League, The Football League, the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Football League. Football (soccer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
For the 2006 film, see Intellectual Property (film). ...
For the Scottish equivalent see Scottish Premier League The FA Premier League (often referred to as the Barclays Premiership in England and the Barclays English Premier League or just simply The EPL internationally) is a league competition for football clubs located at the top of the English football league system...
The Football League is a league competition featuring professional football clubs from England and Wales, and is the oldest such competition in world football. ...
The Scottish Premier League (SPL) is the top division within the current structure of football in Scotland. ...
The Scottish Football League is a league of football teams in Scotland. ...
Many of Football DataCo's activities are contracted out to the Press Association (PA). Thus, PA Sport handles applications for and distributes fixture lists and produces the Actim statistics service on behalf on Football DataCo. The Press Association is the national news agency of the United Kingdom. ...
Football DataCo is wholly owned by FA Premier League and The Football League.
DataCo charges a standard fee for the reproduction of Fixture lists, which currently stands at: £266 plus VAT to print the fixtures of one English club.
Newspapers printing the fixtures of all clubs, will be charged around £6,000 plus VAT by DataCo.
The money accrued by DataCo for the rights to this data, is distributed to league clubs on an egalitarian basis, approximately:
18% to the Premier League clubs;
56% to Football League clubs;
25% to Scotland, mostly to Scottish Football League clubs. Revenue generated by DataCo: £7.5m.
Controversy
The company has been racked by controversy in the UK media, after a 2004 European court of justice ruling that the Premier League and Football League cannot demand payment from media and pools companies for the publication of fixture lists and match information. DataCo refute the ruling, arguing that a legal precedent was set in the UK back in 1959, when the Football League won a landmark victory against Littlewoods Pools, claiming income from the Pools company for their use of the Fixtures list.
Staunch opponents to DataCo argue that the ruling is long out of date, and needs to be brought more inline with the advances in information collection and delivery that we are seeing with the world wide web.
Small, independently owned football fan sites have been the worst hit by DataCo, who charge even non-profit making enterprises pay around £266 for use of single club fixture data. This has meant that many fanzines have been threatened with closure by DataCo.[citations needed]
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