The Norwegian Football Federation, Norsk Toppfotball and Fotball Media have taken legal action against commercial and pay-television broadcaster TV2 in the belief it has infringed rights regulations for coverage of the Eliteserien, the top division of domestic football.
The Discovery Networks Norway division of international media company Discovery Communications holds domestic rights to the Eliteserien under a deal struck in December 2015.
However, TV2 and its FotballXtra programme on TV2 Zebra has been showing goals and highlights from the Eliteserien, along with making content available online, whilst games are being played. The NFF, NTF and Fotball Media believe this infringes Discovery’s rights and has taken action, initially requesting that such content is only shown after games finish.
Managing director of Fotball Media, Knut Kristvang, said: “By interrupting FotballXtra sports news a number of times… the purpose in reality is to secure more content and viewers to the studio broadcast, and this violates the Norwegian football media rights and the exclusive rights Norwegian football has sold to Discovery.”
He added: “We believe TV2’s current practice is an exploitation which is far beyond the news right basis. We see, among other things from other countries that news rights can only be used as a basis for sending highlights from games after they finish playing.”
TV2 chief executive Olav Sandnes has welcomed the decision to seek a legal judgement on the use of such rights, adding that the broadcaster’s use of Eliteserien content is “editorially justified”.
“We are of the opinion that we have used material from football matches in keeping with the intention behind the news right and have made thorough legal reviews,” Sandnes said, according to the Kampanje.com website.