Premiership football in a pub

Ronin247

Is it legal for my local pub in Ireland to show premiership football on a channel such as Digitalb.If it is Legal what would be the best channels/set-up to get premiership games in English.

My local landlord was thinking of trying to get football in but SKY is very expensive and he doesnt have the trade to justify the cost so we were looking to see if there were any alternatives.

I realise that the initial investment would be substantial but it would pay for itself over a couple of years.

MisterAnarchy

Its a bit of a grey area.
Sky have threatened legal action against many pubs and used strong arm tactics.
Technically there is nothing wrong with viewing foreign providers if they are fta .
If you have a legal viewing card it might contravene the conditions of the provider if you are using it outside the target country but thats another matter.
There is a new Television without Frontiers directive coming in this Dec and it will be perfectly legal to watch foreign providers in pubs here and Sky are powerless to stop it.

Ronin247

Thanks for the reply.

So if it is set up for FTA channels it is "ok" and with a foreign card it is "almost ok" so worth the shot.Suppose the next question is what free to air channels are there if any and what equipment he needs.
I think I would be inclined to go down the Digitalb route as by the time anyone had even come near to getting you into court it would be legal anyway,and the legal argument would be with the supplier not the end user.

MisterAnarchy

Canal+ Sweden (1W) would be your best bet or else Digitalb (16e).
You will need a 1m dish for both of them.

byte

Digitalb is hit and miss at times, wrt commentary and pictures. Of course, no Saturday 3pm games anymore (same with Greek Nova).

Canal+ Sweden would be OK, but don't think there's any English audio on their sport channels?

I think Sky Italia have English comms on some of their sports channels (Calcio?).

M5

byte wrote: »

Digitalb is hit and miss at times, wrt commentary and pictures. Of course, no Saturday 3pm games anymore (same with Greek Nova).

Canal+ Sweden would be OK, but don't think there's any English audio on their sport channels?

I think Sky Italia have English comms on some of their sports channels (Calcio?).

Most of the C+ stations have english commentary for the english games, usualy under the Danish audio stream for some reason....

snaps

I have canal+ Sweden, its onlt the sunday games that sometimes dont have english audio, but like was said sometimes the danish audio carrier has english audio.

If the pub was going to get it in, dont advertise it, keep it subtle.

One package that has been overlooked i feel is the polish Cyfra+. Its very cheap, you can get prepaid cards for 5 or 10 months and with the amount of polish here in Ireland Im sure its very easy to get one (If they use their home address) Im looking into this for when my canal+ sub finishes as im cutting costs. 200e will get you 10months on the full package including films, sport and HD! Some german ebayers sell them, but its a little more expensive.

They have english audio and most of the games that are shown on sky/setanta. Films are also in english.

You will need an 80cm dish and a decent receiver that has a card reader or can take a cam to put the card into. Also a receiver with RF output is better for pubs so its easy to distrubute to multiple tvs!

snaps

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

Its a bit of a grey area.
Sky have threatened legal action against many pubs and used strong arm tactics.
Technically there is nothing wrong with viewing foreign providers if they are fta .
If you have a legal viewing card it might contravene the conditions of the provider if you are using it outside the target country but thats another matter.
There is a new Television without Frontiers directive coming in this Dec and it will be perfectly legal to watch foreign providers in pubs here and Sky are powerless to stop it.

This is very interesting. Ive always argued that the EU should be open to everyone and any kind of business and that foriegn tv providers should be allowed to sell their subscriptions to any part of europe. I need to have an in depth look at this directive. At the moment with 1 digital rip of merchant in the UK/Ireland the market needs opening up. Some of the prices that sky charge pubs is scandulous. No wonder premises are going out of business, if they cant afford to have the football on, then the punters will go else where.

Johnnyjump

Anything that would decrease the price of Sky et al would be more than welcome!