New deal frees up live online football coverage

News organisations struck a last-minute deal with the governing bodies of the Premier League and Championship over the weekend, which will allow them to provide live updates throughout matches, albeit with a short time delay.

The deal, struck just hours before the first games of the Premier League season kicked off on Saturday, updates the previous rules on live coverage. The existing deal was put in place for the 2003/04 season and described as "unreasonably restrictive" by the News Media Coalition, which represented news organisations during negotiations.

That agreement restricted news organisations to providing updates only at specific times during a game and contained no proper provisions for Twitter, which was still two years away from being invented.

Although the new deal carries a time delay of a few minutes, journalists will be free to update match coverage throughout the game.

The deal was struck by representatives from the Premier League and Football League and the News Media Coalition, which represents news and image agencies – including Reuters, Agence France Press, and Getty – and newspaper publishers – including News International.

A spokesman for the News Media Coalition, which worked with the Newspaper Publishers Association on the deal – said: "We are delighted to have reached agreement with the leagues and look forward to providing fans with the best possible journalistic coverage of the game: match analysis, superb photography, interaction with top journalists and the real stories behind the play.

"Friday's agreement will put news-gatherers back in the press boxes at football grounds following a week in which a dispute with the football authorities over accreditation terms and conditions saw the media unable to attend matches.

"The previous agreement, signed in in 2004, was perceived as placing unreasonably restrictive constraints on how news organisations could use and distribute their copyright football content at home and abroad."

Although the opening of the Premier League was unaffected, news organisations were unable to cover parts of the Championship and Carling Cup after reporters were barred from the grounds.

The News Media Coalition said it was now looking forward to "working more closely with football leagues" and said the new deal would make a "significant improvement" to football coverage.

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