A note on the fixtures

[robf]

I will NOT be publishing the fixtures as part of a news item nor will they be available in full on the OVF website. I will be highlighting some of the key fixtures and also linking to a full list of fixtures on the official website.

 

I understand from a couple of other website owners I know that the Football League can be quite litigious in prosecuting those sites who do not have a Dataco license. I do not want OVF to fall foul of this, too.

 

What is Dataco?

The Football League requires all websites who want to publish fixtures and results in full to purchase a Dataco licence. The license costs circa £2,000 per season and is therefore out of our budget. All sites who have a Dataco license show it underneath their fixture/results pages, so any site showing fixtures without it could get into trouble with the Football League.

 

However, I will be launching an improved 2011-2012 season area soon and that will contain a component showing the last four results and next four fixtures of Vale's season (this, I believe is not a Dataco contravention).

[Leicestershire Valiant]

The BBC must have one of those licences. They will publish the fixtures in full on the PVFC webpage, though possibly not straight away.

[robf]

The BBC does have a Dataco license - it is displayed below all their fixtures. As does the Sentinel, Sky and so on...

 

Dataco is a TRULY ridiculous system, but last season the FL did a few test legal cases to prosecute fansites who did not have it so I am not prepared to take the risk.

[Burt]

Could you not take the **** a bit and do it 'Pro Evo' style, with each team having a fake name and the league having a fake name too?

[robf]

This is an article from 2005, which features BSandD and Codalmighty, both excellent websites that OVF has always got on really well with. Please note, the fee quoted in that article is now up to nearly £3,000 in the six years since it was published:

 

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Fanzine fight for the right to print fixtures

Small websites are being threatened with closure as the leagues insist on payment for match data

 

David Conn Sports news reporter of the year The Guardian, Wednesday 21 December 2005 09.36 GMT

 

With the season of comfort, joy and compulsive over-eating almost upon us it is sad to report that the troubling case of the Watford Two still rumbles on. Ian Grant and Matthew Rowson argue they are guilty of nothing more than the words in the title of their Watford fanzine website, which Grant, 35, a web designer, launched in December 1994. The internet was then in its rapid ascendant; Watford, it would be fair to say, were not. Grant saw a band play in Brighton and decided its name encapsulated perfectly the Watford fan's existence: Blind, Stupid and Desperate.

 

Rowson, 32, a statistician by profession and lifelong Watford fan, began to contribute to http://www.bsad.org seven years ago and the pair, co-editors now, spend a difficult-to-justify amount of time maintaining the site's fond, ironic chronicling of life with the Hornets. They make no money from it; in fact it costs them £60 for an internet server. They have produced a book and some T-shirts but donated the proceeds to charity or, when the club was in financial crisis in 2002, to the supporters' trust.

 

So when, at the beginning of this season, the site received what Grant and Rowson felt were threatening legal letters demanding the removal of offensive content they were shocked. They refused, their server was contacted and BSaD was taken off the internet until Grant and Rowson backed down. The heinous material that caused the problems? Watford FC's fixtures for 2005-06. "We were extremely surprised and did feel bullied," Rowson says. "We do the fanzine for the love of writing about football, with about 1,000 regular hits weekly. We never thought the outside world was even aware of us."

 

That was reckoning without the keen commercial enforcers at DataCo. This is a company owned by the Premier and Football Leagues, whose job is to charge for publication of the fixture lists, as well as the increasing volume of other data, including match statistics, to which the clubs claim copyright. The operation makes £7m-£8m for English and Scottish professional clubs, paid by 22,000 newspapers, bookmakers, websites and broadcasters here and worldwide. The fee is standard: £266 plus VAT to print the fixtures of one English club. Newspapers printing the fixtures of all clubs, plus a delivery fee, pay around £6,000 plus VAT to DataCo. BSaD, oblivious, printing their own club's forthcoming fixtures, were asked for £266 plus VAT or told they must take them down.

 

"It was farcical," Rowson says. "With all the time and money I'm already spending on the fanzine, can you imagine me telling my wife I'm about to spend £266 for the right to print Watford's fixtures? It was never going to happen."

 

Rowson and Grant are, instead, enjoying a phoney war with DataCo, flagging up a few of Watford's forthcoming fixtures but without mentioning dates. "Why can't you see the rest of the fixtures?" the site asks. "Because we're not allowed to show you them. Never forget, people, that football is just a means to make money."

 

But DataCo is unembarrassed and has pressed on with enforcing its rights against other offenders. The Southampton site http://www.saintsforever.com has felt the sharp sting of contact from DataCo, as has Simon Wilson, who runs the excellent http://www.codalmighty.com, a Grimsby site ringing with joyful self-mockery. "It seems like pure greed," Wilson says, "the League squeezing as much from the devoted fans as they can."

 

If this seems a classic case of big-business football, Scrooge-like, screwing its own most loyal followers then David Folker, DataCo's general manager, makes a reasonable fist of an apparently impossible justification.

 

The story begins in 1959, when the Football League successfully sued Littlewoods, forcing the company to pay for printing the fixtures on pools coupons. At that time the League seemed a more deserving case: the clubs were charging pennies at the turnstiles and there was no TV income but the pools companies were making fortunes. The money, Folker says, became the clubs' major collective source of cash. That case has never been challenged and now, Folker says, the income of around £7.5m is shared equally between all clubs, so 56% goes to the 72 Football League clubs. Only 18% is paid to the 20 English Premier League clubs.

 

"That's around £67,000 per Premiership club," Folker says. "It's very little to the big clubs but for the 30 Scottish Football League clubs, 22% of their total revenue comes from DataCo. This is not the big clubs looking to make money from fans' sites, not at all. We recognise that the fans are the lifeblood of the game." Why so heavy-handed, then? Folker's argument is that they have no choice under competition law. "We have to be consistent."

 

DataCo argue that if they make exceptions, even for non-profit-making distributors - and Folker says, validly, that this is not always easy to ascertain as some fanzines do make money - they could be open to challenge by commercial organisations, like newspapers, who pay up only grudgingly now for what they feel is good advertising for the clubs.

 

Some years ago, to recognise the contribution of fanzines, DataCo struck a deal. It agreed that clubs could officially "nominate" one fanzine each that would then pay a token £1 and be allowed to publish fixtures. None of the websites confronted by DataCo were aware of this at first. Rowson, anyway, saw problems immediately: there is more than one fanzine at most clubs and also, though BSaD has a good relationship with Watford, becoming officially "nominated" is a sure way to destroy a fanzine's credibility.

 

Some believe the Littlewoods case could be successfully challenged now and a law firm has offered its services to Rowson and Grant for free - they're currently considering whether they can face it. Folker, meanwhile, argues that however strange it seems this is for the overall good of the game.

 

"The news-papers, broadcasters and bookmakers are commercial organisations and it is right they pay for printing the fixtures. We're happy if fanzines write an editorial piece which mentions a forthcoming game but they cannot print a list of fixtures with the dates."

 

Where were we again? Oh yes, with a couple of Watford fans, running a fanzine full of warm, amusing reports and reflections on following their club. Blind, Stupid and Desperate - and now quite cross.

 

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[valeblue]

Footballs just a buisness now , nature of the beast Im afraid , everyone wants a piece .

[MattSplatt]

This is why my interest in football is slowly drifting away.Too many damn rules and regulations.No longer the game we once knew.

[Kingsley Valiants]

So if a Poster on this board copy and pasted all the fixtures onto here would OVF still get fined or whatever for that?

 

You've probally got it all under control Rob but it'd probally be a good idea to closely monitor all the various "Fixture" thread's there will more than likely be in the morning... just in case :)

[El Nino]

This is why my interest in football is slowly drifting away.Too many damn rules and regulations.No longer the game we once knew.

 

Bang on the money Matt. I've been like that for a couple of years now. Although its not just football, its the UK in general. Everyone wants something for nowt. Wont be long until it all goes **** up!

 

It's all becoming rather boring.

[Princey]

They will all be in the paper within 24 hours i guess...

[robf]

So if a Poster on this board copy and pasted all the fixtures onto here would OVF still get fined or whatever for that?

 

You've probally got it all under control Rob but it'd probally be a good idea to closely monitor all the various "Fixture" thread's there will more than likely be in the morning... just in case :)

 

I wouldn't recommend anyone to put them in the forum, but I think the legal challenges have been more to do with webmasters producing a specific "Fixtures" page (i.e. trying to suggest that a site has the right to re-publish the fixtures) rather than someone putting the fixtures in a forum (posts are not condoned by website owners so it's not an "official" publishing of the fixtures" by the site). *

* I hope that makes sense, of sorts!

 

However, I would personally appreciate it if no-one put the fixtures up in full. They will be available on sites like the BBC, the official site etc so I'd rather people put a link to them up instead.

 

Thanks!

[ontopgate]

Does anybody know how I can get the fixtures into outlook or onto the calender on my Sony Ericsson phone?