The soccer World Cup was a huge success for Twitter and its video offshoot Vine, but Premier League chiefs in the UK are promising a crackdown on users who attempt to share goals and highlights on social media. Broadcasting rights to the competition currently command billions of dollars but those figures will drop if fans can get their sporting fix for free on the Web. “You can understand that fans see something, they can capture it, they can share it, but ultimately it is against the law,” Premier League director of communications Dan Johnson told the BBC ahead of the new season, which kicks off this weekend. “It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it. We’re developing technologies like GIF crawlers, Vine crawlers, working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity.”
The Premier League has warned fans not to post unofficial videos of goals online after thousands of goals were shared during the World Cup. Through Vine, a popular video sharing service owned by Twitter, fans can upload unofficial clips of football action in an instant. A@FootballVines Twitter page has more than 539,000 followers. Fans may see the clips for free, although the quality can be poor. The Premier League, however, has said it will clamp down on the unofficial videos when the football season starts on Saturday. Dan Johnson, director of communications at the Premier League, said posting goal vines was illegal, as was sharing the videos on websites such as Twitter, and amounted to breaking copyright laws. “You can understand that fans see something, they can capture it, they can share it, but ultimately it is against the law,” he told the BBC’s Newsbeat programme. “It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it, we’re developing technologies like gif crawlers, Vine crawlers, working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity. I know it sounds as if we’re killjoys but we have to protect our intellectual property.” TV companies also have an interest in curbing the practice as they pay millions in rights to show games. Sky Sport and BT Sport paid £3bn for the rights to show football to its subscribers and so they see football video sharing services as a threat.The Sun and the Times have also bought online rights and are keen not to have people able to see goal clips for free elsewhere.
