With huge fantasy ramification overseas and potentially even in the United States, Britain’s High Court ruled that the schedules of the English Premier League are copyrighted materials and should be protected as such. The court ruled that since making the schedules was a very complicated activity that schedule makers should have the results of their laboring protected under British copyright law. The lawsuit was brought by the EPL against a subsidiary of Yahoo!, which printed the schedules without licensing the information from the EPL.

Fantasy English Premier League is one of the largest fantasy markets outside of the United States and is the most popular in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom. While it remains to be seen how this will be enforced in Britain, and if possible, in the United States, this should definitely be something of which anyone operating or playing in an EPL game should take note.

Hopefully, this is does not give the professional leagues in the United States a new angle to use to force fantasy leagues to license their games. After Major League Baseball lost its lawsuit against CDM Sports in 2007, the fantasy industry has been operating under the notion that fantasy leagues and the use of real statistics did not have to be licensed. However, the schedule argument could be a back door to bring the licensing issue back up. Imagine not being able to determine your starting lineup because your fantasy league service did not have the the upcoming schedules. Fantasy sites would be forced to pay the licensing fee (assuming they could get a license) to the leagues to include this small, but vital piece of information.

What are your thoughts on the ruling and potential ramifications?

I love reading data, which partly why I have always loved fantasy sports. Within the industry, getting data on international participation is always the hardest. When I read about fantasy gaining in India, it mentioned the growth of fantasy English Premier League (EPL) in India, I could not help but to get excited. Currently, over 38,000 Indians are playing in the official fantasy EPL site, while another 10,000 are playing in ESPN Fantasy EPL League, and another 6,000 are playing the Fantasy Champions League.

50,000 fantasy players is not exactly enough to say that fantasy sports has gone mainstream, but it is a very significant start. In a country with over 1.2B people and a burgeoning middle class, there is definitely a possibility that India may be the next big fantasy market.

The key to figuring out which fantasy sports will do well in international markets is figuring out which real sports do well in those markets. It is highly unlikely that football, baseball, and basketball will be the big fantasy sports. More than likely, soccer, cricket, and rugby will be the dominant fantasy sports overseas.