As previously suggested, people are getting prematurely excited. Firstly this is an advocate's opinion and whilst having been accepted in 90% of cases to date, they have not been accepted in 100% of cases, so is not a done deal.
There are then (should the advocate's advice be acted on) potentially far reaching repercussions, all of which will not necessarily be to the benefit of the English football fan and English football. Some may be as follows.
- Sky may dramatically reduce the amount they are willing to pay for future seasons, critically affecting the income to the FPL, many teams go bust, league deteriorates, foreign audiences lose interest and foreign providers no longer buy the rights.
- The FaPL no longer sell on their coverage to non-UK providers at the existing prices, making them pay the same rates as UK based companies, putting it out of reach for less affluent countries, or perhaps even not resell at all outside the UK.
- Potentially no more 3pm games will be televised (even by non-uk providers), in fact this could spell the end of 3pm Premiership games altogether
- If the pubs and clubs are cleared to buy direct from the non-UK providers, they will perhaps need to pay commercial rates, not domestic as at present, so the differences may not be so huge, it will also mean that the very people hawking these enhanced price foreign subscription packages to pubs, will lose out to direct sales.
It ain't all sunshine and roses.