The decision follows UK's so-called 'pub landlady' case, after a pub owner was prosecuted for using a Greek pay TV decoder to show Premier League soccer, rather than pay BSkyB for a commercial premises licence. The court ruled in favour of the league in that matter, saying that the transmission to the public of Premier League feeds without the permission of the League was illegal, because elements of the broadcast contained copyrighted works. Crucially though, the live coverage of the game itself is not subject to such copyright. In practice, this means that home viewers can now choose to buy foreign pay TV subscriptions, but pubs (offering public performances) will still be subject to breach of copyright if they show elements of the content created by BSkyB or the League. Although copyright collecting societies exist throughout Europe to collect dues on the retransmission of protected works, it would require BSkyB or the League to sign up with a collecting partner in order to collect payments. Given the interests of both parties, that seems unlikely.

The market impact of this ruling is wide-ranging and diverse. For the pay TV industry it means operators are potentially free to sell subscriptions across the entire EU, although it must be remembered that the value of all existing rights deals (regardless of content type) are based on single territory licences. If rights holders find their income from content falling as a result, the cost of rights to pay TV operators outside the UK (the EU's most lucrative rights market) will rise. This could tip a number of smaller pay TV operations over the edge, particularly in several Eastern European markets, where competition among multiple suppliers is intense. For the Premier League and its clubs, the ruling could mean a significant drop in rights income if BSkyB is no longer willing to pay a huge premium for exclusive UK rights. However, opportunity also exists, because the ruling applies equally to BSkyB, allowing it to sell outside the UK.

As a consequence, we see a range of possible scenarios emerging:

1) With the interests of the Premier League currently best served by its lucrative UK deal, it opens up the potential to create a 'super operator' controlling pan-European Premier League rights and selling access across 27 markets. This would impact negatively a number of non-UK pay TV operations, particularly in countries whose nationals supply key League players and where the UK league is seen as a valuable addition to their premium soccer coverage.

2) The Premier League, recognising the value of the UK and BSkyB to its business, could simply choose not to sell to satellite operators in other European markets, concentrating instead on cable, IPTV and terrestrial providers, for which extra-territorial access is a minimal issue. While this would limit the pool of other operators available to bid for rights, it would also maintain the value of the BSkyB deal. With UK sports package prices relatively high, consumers outside the UK would still be likely to opt for local operators when sourcing sports content.

3) Another potential model, although highly complex, would be for the Premier League to adopt a pay-as-you go licence model for subscription sales outside the country in which the rights deal was struck, scaling the payments based on market value. This would allow them to sell a core national deal in all EU markets and recoup money from incremental subscriptions sold in other EU markets.

BSkyB would likely stand to gain from scenario one, and would only face losing out in the third scenario - although this would be highly contingent upon the pricing model adopted. The Premier League stands to lose the most from the decision - with all of the possible business model adjustments simply damage limitation in the short term.

The impact on rights other than sports is less clear. Although the ruling potentially impacts movies and series as well, the dubbing and subtitling required in non-English speaking markets may offer some protection against pan-regional licences.