Landlady Karen Murphy won her fight against football bosses today to be able to show cheap foreign coverage of English matches in her pub.

Murphy was told she wasn’t allowed to use a European provider to screen football games at her pub, The Red White and Blue in Portsmouth.

She was taken to court by football bosses for showing live games using a Greek TV decoder and ordered to pay £8,000.

But she took it to the European Court of Justice – where she argued that the Premier League’s stance was “contrary to EU law” – and won the case today.

Murphy said: "It's been the battle of the little guy – these corporate people feel they can throw money at things and just win."

Fans could see prices for live sport dwindle as broadcasters may stop offering multi-million pound deals for exclusive rights.

The verdict means that fans are allowed to buy a cheap decoder from anywhere in Europe to watch Premier League games and could cause the Premier League changes its exclusive agreements with its main income provider, Sky Sports, and ESPN.

The ruling could also potentially affect any other sport that sells broadcast rights on a country-by-country basis, and even the sale of TV programmes generally  across Europe.

Murphy said she paid £800 a year for the foreign sports service, but had to pay £700 a month for Sky.

European judges said the FA Premier League can’t stop people getting better deals than from BSkyB, which paid £1billion for broadcasting rights in the UK.

The ECJ made a statement that said: "National legislation which prohibits the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards is contrary to the freedom to provide services and cannot be justified either in light of the objective of protecting intellectual property rights or by the objective of encouraging the public to attend football stadiums."

Twitter users have been vocal on the subject, with views on both sides of the spectrum.

@mattzarb called it “Potentially a disaster for Sky” and @GazWeetman pointed out: “Mind you, Landlady Karen Murphy wouldn't be so chipper if she discovered that a pub down the road was selling pints from her barrels for free.”

But others saw it as a good thing, with @masqueliverpool saying: “Congrats to Karen Murphy! Common sense prevails.”

And @TimSmedley tweeted: “Congrats to Karen Murphy. This may see the money fall out the bottom of the PL and the billionaires go elsewhere, but may be no bad thing.”