The judgement means that country-by-country monopolies of televised sporting events, such as English Premier League matches, will now be extremely difficult to maintain.

The ruling stems from a British case between News Corp.’s pay TV service BSkyB and a pub owner showing Premier League games using a Greek satellite decoder. The court said transmission of matches in a pub is a commercial “communication to the public” and therefore restricted, agreeing with the media giant on a technical point. However, on the wider issue, the court stressed the use of a foreign broadcast service is protected by European open-market rules. Therefore, there is nothing to prevent consumers from signing up to any TV service offered within the union.

With this decision, the court may have changed the economics of professional sports leagues, which for years have relied on exclusive TV licenses for a major portion of their revenues. During the proceedings, the ECJ heard that the Greek decoder was significantly cheaper than BSkyB’s offer.

Sports leagues will now have to decide whether to start signing EU-wide contracts, or to let media outlets include more self-produced content that would make national broadcasts copyrightable.