One of the most significant aspects of last week's European court of justice ruling on the Premier League's action against the pub landlady Karen Murphy was the court's observation that the Premier League cannot claim copyright in the matches themselves. It said that those sporting events cannot be considered to be an author's own intellectual creation and, therefore, by extension to be "works" for the purposes of copyright protection in the European Union.

Sports associations have been lobbying for years for such protection to be conveyed on their events. In the UK, Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League, has aligned his business with the Creative Coalition Campaign, a group formed to protect the interests of rights holders in the film, music, publishing and TV production industries.

Fanned by the belief that third parties, including the media, are profiting from their events and the Premier League by contrast is losing revenues, the award of copyright protection would have enabled sports organisations to tighten their grip on their games and on the generation of original content (notwithstanding the challenges presented by the use of social media by fans). Sporting events being protected works would also have made it easier to pursue acts of infringement. That Murphy, who argued for the right to show Premier League football in her pub using a foreign decoder, may continue to be prevented from doing so due to the existence of protected works, such as Sky and Premier League graphics, theme tunes and logos, was the single crumb of comfort from a copyright perspective to come out of the judgment.

In 2009 the Australian Senate convened a committee to investigate event contracts governing media access against a backdrop, seen also internationally, of a marked decline in the relationship between sport and the media: sports associations have been trying, via the instrument of accreditation to their events, to impose increasing controls over media reporting – plus a demand by some to share in revenues from news coverage.

As part of the committee hearings, representatives of sport submitted their view that "the athletes, clubs and sporting organisations put on the 'show'" and it was therefore their "submission that they should be rewarded by ensuring the Copyright Act protects their performance. That is, that there should be copyright in the performance of sport. Sporting organisations should be able to use and commercialise this intellectual property in the same way they can with other intellectual property assets." In essence, by putting on a "show", having rules and tactics they were arguing that sport shares kinship with dance choreography, which does enjoy copyright protection. These views were rejected by the parliamentary committee, which came down on the side of the media.

Had the ECJ agreed that sport events attracted their own copyright protection, the impact could potentially have been devastating for newspapers and news agencies, and therefore for readers. We could have seen the monopolisation of certain traditional press formats; the ability to create still pictures being sold to the highest bidder in the same way as broadcast rights, leading to severe economic harm to picture agencies and the shift of absolute editorial control of picture coverage into the hands of sports associations; and further steps being taken on the road to the selling of "reporting rights", ultimately fulfilling the long-term goal of the leagues to own and control all content emanating from their events. The result: censorship through the emasculation of independent viewpoints.

This year's heated negotiations between the newspapers and news agencies on the one side and the football leagues on the other concerning access agreements demonstrate the resolute positions of both sides – the newspapers to protect basic press freedoms (with their moral compunction bolstered by survey after survey showing the media's contribution to the value of sponsorship agreements and TV rights deals), and the leagues to maximise control and commercialisation of their product.

Robert Hahn is head of Rights & Content Acquisition at Guardian News and Media Ltd