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The Premier League

FAPL

The Premier League organises and commercialises the top division of English football, with the 20 Clubs at any one time in the League being the Shareholders.

Lobbying Activity

Response to Consumer Agenda 2025-2030 and Action Plan on Consumers in the Single Market

31 Aug 2025

The Premier League welcomes the European Commissions Consumer Agenda 20252030 and its focus on addressing consumer concerns in a rapidly evolving digital and cultural landscape. As the most watched football league globally and the most-watched non domestic league across EU Member States, the Premier League is a global leader in sport and deeply embedded in Europes cultural and social fabric. Sport makes a vital contribution to Europes economy and society, representing 2% of GDP and 3% of total employment, while also driving community cohesion, social inclusion, and public health. These benefits are underpinned by a regulatory framework that allows the sector to thrive. A central feature of that framework is territorially exclusive licensing, which ensures consumers enjoy tailored, affordable, and diverse offers while enabling reinvestment in grassroots and community development. Territorial licensing allows rights holders to adapt offers to local needs, languages, and purchasing power. This model benefits consumers by maintaining service diversity, supporting affordability, and promoting reinvestment in new content and grassroots programmes. The revenues generated are redistributed across the football ecosystem, strengthening both elite and community levels. Undermining territorial exclusivity and creating de facto pan-European licensing would have damaging consequences. Consumers would likely face higher costs, as prices would align with the markets where demand is highest. Content variety would diminish, with fewer resources for tailoring to local audiences, including diverse linguistic offers. Alongside this structural challenge, online piracy of live content poses a growing consumer protection crisis. Pirate platforms expose users to identity theft, fraud, deceptive payment systems, malware, and harmful content for minors. Each euro lost to piracy is one not reinvested in sport and culture. The growing use of influencer marketing to promote illegal streaming devices, IPTV services, and VPN-based circumvention tools further trivialises piracy, normalises risky and criminal behaviour, and undermines sustainable business models. Moreover, reduced revenues mean fewer resources for reinvestment in grassroots programmes, lower-quality services for fans, and diminished opportunities for local content production. In this sense, piracy not only exposes individual users to risks but erodes the broader public value that sport and culture deliver to European societies. In this context, the Premier League recommends: Maintaining territorial exclusivity as a cornerstone of consumer welfare, cultural diversity, and sector sustainability. Strengthening anti-piracy legislation to protect consumers from fraud and harmful content. Addressing illicit influencer marketing to curb the promotion of piracy-enabling services and devices. The Premier League is committed to supporting the Commissions objectives of enhancing consumer protection and welfare. Achieving these goals requires recognition of the specific dynamics of sport and cultural markets. Territorial exclusivity and copyright are not barriers to the Digital Single Market; they are enablers of consumer choice, cultural diversity, and investment. By preserving them, while tackling piracy and illicit marketing, the EU can safeguard Europes cultural and sporting assets for generations, ensuring consumers continue to enjoy safe, diverse, and affordable content.
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Meeting with Thomas Schmitz (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen) and Forward Global

16 Jul 2025 · Piracy

Meeting with Zoltán Tarr (Member of the European Parliament) and Forward Global

14 Jul 2025 · Sport policies in the EU

Response to Assessment of the effects of the Recommendation on combating online piracy of sports and other live events

4 Jun 2025

The piracy of live sports content remains a threat to the Premier Leagues business and sporting model. The majority of our revenues are derived from the sale of live broadcast rights for our matches and the wholesale theft of this live content deprives us of significant sums of money which could be reinvested in the football ecosystem. We at the Premier League have closely followed the work of the European Commission (EC) to address this issue and we remain hopeful that these efforts will soon bear fruit. In our response, we would like to illustrate the current state of play and our assessment of the necessary route forward. In answer to the first question, as a rightsholder we have made every effort to notify online intermediary services in the required format, in good time of the presence of illegal streams of our content being delivered via their services. However, in large part they have simply failed to act on these notices, either entirely or not within the live window during which our content holds almost all of its value. Unfortunately, online intermediaries are currently exploiting the vagueness of language in existing legislation to avoid taking timely action. Beyond the extensive issuing of notices to infringing platforms, we also make use of injunctions wherever they are available, being sure to ensure that the blocking that they enable applies in the most targeted way possible. With regard to the KPI on legal offers, our content is available in every member state of the EU and we clearly identify all of our broadcast partners in every individual country and territory in which we operate, through our website. Further, we have provided this information directly to the EUIPO as part of its ongoing data gathering exercise. Regarding the question of the extent to which the Recommendation has had the effect of reducing illegal piracy, we dont believe that it has. When we analyse the total number of notices sent to Dedicated Server Providers over the last 2 years and then the percentage where we received a response and action was taken, we do not see any improvement following the adoption and implementation of the Recommendation. Despite all of our efforts to work in good faith with the Recommendation process, we have not seen any meaningful impact from its implementation. We strongly believe that the cause of this lies in its non-binding nature, allowing for many of its provisions to simply be ignored by intermediaries unwilling to work with us to address this pressing issue. The non-binding nature of the Recommendation has limited its practical impact. While it offers a useful framework, its lack of enforceability has led to inconsistent adoption across Member States and by intermediaries. On the other hand, the Digital Services Act is not fit for live sport content. It does not include an obligation on Hosting Services and Dedicated Server Providers to take down the content notified by rightsholders immediately and in any case during the live window. Indeed, the DSA refers to the notion of "expeditious" removal in relation to hosting services. But this notion is vague timing wise and therefore makes the enforcement of their rights by live sport rightsholders such as the Premier League almost impossible. If the EC is serious about tackling online piracy of live content, it will have to go one step further and propose to clarify that expeditious removal means immediately and in any case during the live window. We would like to recall that in the 2018 Ecatel Case, the Juge in the Netherlands found that 30 minutes was long enough for a DSP such as Ecatel to respond to the notice sent and take down the infringing content. The judge also concluded that Intermediaries are best placed to act, that it is not overly complex or costly and that it does not prejudice freedom of enterprise.
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Meeting with Axel Voss (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur) and Google and

6 May 2025 · Copyright and generative AI

Meeting with Pauline Rouch (Cabinet of Commissioner Mariya Gabriel)

1 Mar 2022 · Phénomène du piratage des évènements sportifs retransmis en direct.

Meeting with Manuel Mateo Goyet (Cabinet of Commissioner Mariya Gabriel)

11 Dec 2018 · Copyright

Meeting with Szabolcs Horvath (Cabinet of Commissioner Tibor Navracsics)

6 Dec 2018 · radio rights

Meeting with Julian King (Commissioner) and

27 Nov 2018 · cyber security

Response to Measures to further improve the effectiveness of the fight against illegal content online

30 Mar 2018

You will find attached the Premier League's response to the EC Impact Assessment on measures to improve the effectiveness of the fight against illegal content online.
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Meeting with Jonathan Hill (Commissioner)

13 May 2016 · Digital Single Market and Copywright

Meeting with Szabolcs Horvath (Cabinet of Commissioner Tibor Navracsics)

16 Oct 2015 · Digital Single Market

Meeting with Inge Bernaerts (Cabinet of Commissioner Marianne Thyssen)

8 Jul 2015 · Free movement of workers