Don't bet against new football rights bonanza

Having settled the dispute with the players' union, the Premier League is developing a series of commercial arrangements, the value of which could conceivably match the money currently paid to it by the broadcasters.

This may sound far-fetched, but forecasts show that by selling the copyright to Premier League fixtures to bookmakers as 'database rights' and exploiting an anticipated boom in interactive betting, the Premier League could generate £400 million a year.

Solicitor Anthony Coles, a partner at the London firm of Jeffrey Green Russell, believes that increasingly, governing bodies such as the Premier League will see the control, sale and licensing of the database rights - the rights that come out of an event taking place - as a source of revenue. "Football's database rights are valuable and the owners of those rights will want to protect and ultimately sell or license their use," he says.

As a result, the Premier and Football Leagues established a 50-50 joint venture to manage the copyright of their fixtures and have appointed an agent to license and sell the rights.

Although fixture licences have been available for sale since 1982, it is the collation of data from those fixtures - how many corners there were during the match etc - that has added commercial value. The football authorities have realised that here is a deep, untapped well of revenues.

According to Coles, the chief beneficiaries of the use of this data, the bookmakers, are going to have to pay more for it. "The sports betting industry has made a living from data that has not been ring-fenced," he said. "The owners of data not already in the public domain will want to generate an income from its sale. I think we shall see litigation to restrict the use of data which comes from sporting events."