Sky browned off as landlords turn to Al-Jazeera

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A group of pub landlords in Portsmouth have escaped punishment after finding a unique way of showing live Premiership matches at knock-down prices. They have signed up to Al-Jazeera Sports Plus which, at only %u00A3300 for an annual subscription, is considerably cheaper than the %u00A36,000 that some pubs in Britain have to pay for the privilege of showing Sky Sports in their hostelries.
The commentary is in Arabic and the adverts for items normally of little interest to anyone in Portsmouth, such as Middle East mobile phone companies. "We turn the volume down," said Derek Hopper, landlord of the Royal Exchange pub. "We tried radio but we found it was a little distorted."

Al-Jazeera is doing nothing wrong as they have legally bought the rights to the matches for countries outside the European Union. "It's illegal and it's copyright theft," said Dan Johnson, a spokesman for the Premier League. "We sell to Sky, and they have the sole rights to show league matches [in Britain]."

The Premier League has tried to sue the five pubs in Portsmouth showing matches on Al-Jazeera but in two cases last month the landlords were cleared because the judge ruled they were not aware they were doing anything illegal. The other three had their case dismissed after the judge refused the Premier League time to gather more evidence. The pubs' problem is that they now know they will be challenged and must decide whether to carry on and risk getting caught.

Venables in dual role

England players reading the News of the World on Sunday must have raised their eyebrows. Besides the latest serialisation of Steven Gerrard's autobiography, which claimed that Theo Walcott should never have been in the World Cup squad, they were also treated to a tactical analysis of their performance against Greece a few days earlier by the new assistant coach Terry Venables.

Can it be right that a senior Football Association official is allowed to share his views with one newspaper, for which he is paid handsomely no doubt - especially when the players themselves were banned from doing columns during Euro 2004 and the World Cup in Germany? It will be interesting to see if the FA is prepared to take action against a man they have famously fallen out with once before, resulting in him leaving them when he was manager.

A top spot for Lerner

Billionaire Randy Lerner, who is hoping to complete his takeover of Aston Villa shortly, may have to think of moving his British home, which is just a stone's throw from Stamford Bridge. Lerner owns a magnificent house in south Kensington, and Chelsea fans pass down the end of his street as they head for home matches. Perhaps we will soon see Mr Lerner, left, in the estate agents of Sutton Coldfield, where he could buy a nice house for about %u00A32m in Four Oaks, the exclusive estate which has long been the preferred destination of the city's football folk, including Doug Ellis, the man he is buying Villa off.

Campbell retires in time

If Darren Campbell had not retired last week he may have found himself in the unwanted position of being the first British athlete to face disciplinary action over his attack on Dwain Chambers and his failure to expose the people who encouraged him to take banned performance-enhancing drugs. Under the new athletes' contracts introduced earlier this year, and which the Olympic gold medallist had signed, he was in breach of rule 6.2.

Among other things this committed him to portraying the sport "in a positive light", not to bring UK Athletics into disrepute and to behave "reasonably and in a manner that shows proper respect for other athletes". Meanwhile, only two athletes out of nearly 200 have failed to sign the contracts. They are Paula Radcliffe, the world marathon champion and world record holder, and Emily Pidgeon, considered one of the sport's brightest hopes for the London Olympics in 2012.

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