News & Opinion - Tue 4th Oct 2011
Here you will find all our latest news, views and events.
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Tue 4th Oct 11 SKY HIGH EMOTIONS FOR PUB LANDLADY
It is excellent news that a pub landlady has won the right to show Premier League football games on her foreign satellite decoder.
I would usually be decrying the interfering nature of the European Courts of Justice, especially when they poke their beaks into issues of national importance, but in this case it seems that common sense has prevailed. If we're in Europe then we should be able to benefit from a truly single market and the fact that this landlady was taken to court shows just how anti-competitive UK football and satellite broadcasting has become.
With the increasing use of digital technology and mobile devices to access international programmes the broadcasting laws in this country have been left behind. Another result of this landmark ruling is that the costs of watching live football must now surely fall, because there is suddenly a much cheaper legal alternative for football fans; the logical follow-on scenario is that footballers' wages might actually start to fall.
I suspect the market for foreign decoders is going to have a bit of a boom.
We just need to start learning Greek!