Pub landlady takes on Sky Sports and looks like a winner

Don't shoot the messenger 

After being fined over £8000 for showing Premier League games via a Greek Satellite Channel in her Pub she appealed to the European Court of Justice as opposed to the ECHR the other tinpot dictator in Brussels and obtained an Advocate’s opinion that Sky’s block breached EU Law.

 What baffles me is the reach of Sky in using the law to hammer pubs for showing satellite channels in their own property. This surely has to be a Bridge Too Far. Did we really make laws like this that forbid a pub owner from tuning in to a satellite broadcast in their own Pub?

I know there’s such a thing as performing rights and all that, but £700 a month for a Sky Sports has to be on the cusp of extortion, when it used to be seventeen shillings and sixpence in the Normanton End at the Baseball Ground when Brian Clough reigned supreme and Derby County were top of the shop.

None of these obscene weekly amounts to so called superstars, in those days, but now  it’s all got out of hand and needs to be reined in. So maybe this European Court of Justice is not such a bad thing. Let’s hope they stick to their guns and curb the Digger’s power over the game we gave to the world.

Watch this space I'll be back!
Tom.