Research on Reality and Comparation on legal issues about Sports and Broadcasting among EU, Germany and Japan

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After two years of our research, we could investigate the actual situation and legal problems of sportsevents and broadcasting rights among the EU, Germany and Japan.(1) At first we have analyzed the so called shorttimebroadcasting case by the German Federal Constitutional Court. In February 1998, in a dispute between public broadcasters and the Soccer Federation supported by the German Government, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that television stations should not be allowed to broadcast short highlights of professional sports and -other events without paying broadcasting rights. In its ruling, the court asked the legislature to amend, at the latest within the next five years, a 1991 law which was adopted by 16 German states allowing broadcasters to show up to 90 seconds of short broadcasts at no cost. The court pointed out the importance of such news summaries. They were necessary to prevent a monopoly on news. The quality of news could only be preserved as long as they did not come from a single source. The court, however, stressed as well that giving these broadcasting rights for free to the TV stations did violate constitutional rights of the sports events' organisers.(2) Secondly in our research we concentrated on the historical background of broadcasting rights, criticism or appreciation about the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court and summarized the international discussion about "Global Access". We compared the legal backgrounds of broadcasting systems between Europe, the United States of America and Japan. Especially, as the first academic reseach in Japan, we investigated- and enlightened on Japanese customs among broadcasters as to broadcasting of sportsevents.