Court clarifies rules for broadcasting ice hockey highlights
Published: Thursday, Jul 18th 2024, 12:10
Retour au fil d'actualité
The Federal Administrative Court has laid down the guidelines for SRG's short reports on National League ice hockey matches. Sunrise has the exclusive rights to broadcast the games until 2026/27, which has led to a dispute with the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG.
In the dispute between Sunrise and SRG, the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) decided in December 2022 on the conditions under which SRG may broadcast short reports on National League ice hockey matches. Both Sunrise, as the holder of the exclusive rights, and SRG have lodged an appeal with the Federal Administrative Court.
According to the court's ruling published on Thursday, Sunrise and SRG disagree as to when SRG may show short reports, whether SRG can make them available for retrieval on digital platforms such as its website, and how the transmission signal to be provided by Sunrise should be structured.
According to the Federal Administrative Court, SRG can report from the end of a match and does not have to wait for a further deadline. SRG may only offer short reports for on-demand viewing on digital platforms to the extent that it provides the television program broadcast in the linear program with the short report unchanged. It may therefore not offer the short reports individually, as part of other programs or as part of text reports.
Source reference permitted
Sunrise must make the signal available to SRG with a reference to the source, but free of additions such as graphics in the image or similar. The Federal Administrative Court considered the positions of Sunrise and SRG to be partially justified.
Sunrise has acquired the exclusive rights to broadcast the top ice hockey league for the 2022/23 to 2026/27 seasons. As the broadcaster, SRG has the legal right to broadcast short reports of a maximum of three minutes on these games.
This is intended to ensure that the population has free access to essential information about public events. In addition, several broadcasters should be able to report on an event from different perspectives and thus contribute to the diversity of information and opinions.
The ruling is not yet final and can be appealed to the Federal Supreme Court. (Judgments A-615/2023 and A-660/2023 of 10.7.2024)
©Keystone/SDA
French 
English 
German 
Spanish 
Arabic