A way to watch F1 on sky without paying too much

Six years ago Karen Murphy, who runs a pub in Portsmouth, was taken to court for showing Premier League games by using a cheap Greek decoder card, which cost £118 per month instead of the £480 it would have cost with the official broadcaster. Despite racking up costs and fines of £8,000, Murphy took her case to the European Court of Justice claiming that she should be able to show coverage from within the European Union in her pub. In February, an Advocate General for the ECJ said she was right.

The ECJ delivered a judgment that any legislation preventing the import, sale or use of these decoder cards cannot be justified in EU law that concerns free trade. While Murphy’s case still needs to be settled at the High Court (probably in about five months’ time), the ECJ judgment is final and cannot be appealed against.

No, and here it gets a little complicated. While the Premier League can no longer preserve territorial exclusivity, the ECJ ruling effectively allowed them to stop foreign broadcasts in pubs or other public places. It turns out that while you cannot copyright a match, you can copyright things like the Premier League logo, any original music or even the way that you edit the footage.

So all the Premier League has to do is put a logo on all its foreign feeds and that copyrights the lot. If you want to show this copyrighted material in your pub you need the Premier League’s permission. And guess what? They are not going to give it to you if you have a Greek decoder.

Nothing has really changed then?

Wrong again. You are only in breach of copyright if you are showing it in public. What this ruling means is that you are now well within your rights to watch Premier League games on a foreign feed in your own home.

If you don’t mind watching Premier League football with Greek commentary. In fact, you can now buy a decoder card from any provider in the EU. While savings can be made on what you pay per month, the downside is that, without intelligible commentary, reporting or post-match interviews, much of the drama will be lost.

To be taken into account, however, is the fact that foreign providers broadcast the Saturday 3pm games, which are subject to a domestic blackout. So diehard fans who cannot watch at the ground now have a legal way of watching their side on a Saturday afternoon.

They also show more games than domestic broadcasters, in many cases all 380 Premier League games. It will be interesting to see how hard foreign broadcasters will market their services after this ruling.


Surely they show F1 on channel somewhere?

Will the commentating not be in Greek though?

possibly depends what you choose some channels use english like the same way we have al jazeera tv

When I used to work in Africa, I watched every single premeir league game on my decoder for a fraction of the cost.

It's amazing what we have to put up with in our country. Truly amazing

Well, given how easy it is to find internet streams for football matches (good quality and many in English), I would be very surprised if someone didn't start showing F1 races in the same way.

Not that I'm condoning unauthorised video feeds of any kind, you understand.

Several EU countries show F1 (using the same pictures as BBC use currently and Sky will be using next year). All countries just add their own commentary. On holiday recently in Tenerife, I had the choice of watching the Singapore GP with either a German or Spanish commentary - went for the Spanish one because the picture was better.