If you don’t want football matches to be shown between 2:45 and 5:15, maybe you might wish not to allow TV companies to broadcast them. This thought has apparently not come to the SPL:
A licensee in Glasgow has been stopped from using a decoder to access and screen overseas broadcasts of Scottish Premier League matches.
The Court of Session in Edinburgh granted an interim interdict against The Spirit Bar in the east end.
[BBC News Scotland, “Licensee handed TV football ban“]
The basic situation is that all games are taped. Through a UEFA ruling, we can’t actually show most games live within the UK (those between 2:45 and 5:15 on Saturdays) because it’ll stop people being extorted by the clubs, but at the same time rights to all the games are sold to countries outside UK jurisdiction which aren’t subject to this limit.
Since the satellites that serve the Middle East are very much accessible from UK skies using a large (but standard) dish, you can entirely legally purchase a subscription from a Turkish satellite provider and thus gain access to SPL/EPL/other non-Sky football. Often with English commentary, too. A few people in the know – mostly satellite enthusiasts and pubs – have taken this up, and the football authorities are not happy.
Sky in particular are furious at this: the fees they charge pub-owners are astronomical (for a lesser service, too – the pub versions of Sky Sports are 4:3, not widescreen) and they don’t want to lose that easy, monopoly income. They’ve actually failed at this in the English courts, but obviously they’ve decided that the Scots might be an easier target.
Going straight to the point: it is not illegal for a pub-owner to posess a foreign decoder, the decoder owner pays the subscription fee to the foreign satellite company, the SPL/EPL/whatever are paid for the rights from the foreign broadcaster, and therefore if it gets picked up in Britain it should be none of their business. All prosecuting people does is shows us
- how silly the rule is
- how expensive Sky areand, most importantly,
- that more people really should do this
Yes! Buy a motorised dish! Screw Sky! Screw £30+ gate fees! Screw the SPL and EPL! And then maybe, just, they’ll see some sense.
F L I C K E R I N G / F R A M E 