FOOTBALL DATACO

'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.
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.
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.

Contents

Controversy

External links

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Staunch opponents to DataCo argue that the ruling is long out of date, and needs to be brought more inline with the advances in information collection and delivery that we are seeing with the world wide web.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 around £266 for use of single club fixture data. This has meant that many fanzines have been threatened with closure by DataCo.

External links

★ Free The Fixtures - make fixtures available to fanzines for free

★ Fanzine fight for the right to print fixtures - The Guardian

★ Boost for papers in football fixtures row - The Guardian

★ Lockout fear over football rights - BBC News

★ Parliamentary Debate in 2007 asserting that Football DataCo DO NOT have the right to charge for basic fixture lists