DR lockout averted in extra time … penalty shootout beckons

There is still a chance that a games blackout could rear its ugly head in early July

Jun 12, 2014

Football fans in Denmark can rejoice as the national broadcaster DR yesterday agreed to a collective wage agreement with its employees a day before the World Cup kicks off.

The lengthy negotiations, which eventually yielded a new three-year wage deal with improved wages for the journalists, means that DR’s transmission of roughly half of the World Cup games will go ahead as planned, thus thwarting a potential lockout.

“We were charged by our members to not compromise any of their current benefits, and we have succeeded in doing that,” Claus Iwersen, the chief negotiator for the journalists' union, Dansk Journalistforbund (DJ), said in a press release.

DJ’s board will have to green-light the agreement next week, before DR’s employees vote to approve it. A rejection of either would mean the lockout could become a reality on July 3, just days after the World Cup moves into the knockout phase.

Roskilde Festival blues: Stones 1 Spain 0
In related news, a potential lockout won’t have any bearing for people wanting to watch the quarter-finals on July 4 and 5 at the Roskilde Festival this summer, because its organisers have revealed they won’t be showing any games on a big screen as they’ve done in previous years.

The organisers argued that it’s too expensive and that they would rather focus on their own festival's content.