Mark Daniels: Send Us Victorious (up the garden path...)

It can hardly have gone unnoticed this week that on Saturday there will be one of those football game things, and that it'll be between England and Ukraine. And that it won't be shown on telly. Anywhere.

Instead, it'll be shown in Odeon Cinemas and on the Internet - but Perform's Terms & Conditions (the company broadcasting the Internet Football Match) expressly state that the match can not be shown for commercial purposes under any circumstances (except in the cinema, presumably).

Indeed, to quote from their website: This means, for example, that you must not charge any third party for viewing the Match and that you cannot use the Site to attract others to buy goods or services from you, or anyone else.

It smacks of an anti-competitive nature and most of us have had a good whinge about it in one form or another. It's bad enough that we have to pay exorbitant fees to Sky if we want to show football matches, but now we're not even being allowed to show it at all, even if we want to pay for it.

It does worry me, however, as to how reliable their broadcast might be. I tried contacting Perform via their website to find out why commercial establishments had been left out of the loop, only to have the web page return an error each time I hit the submit button. So I tried sending them an e-mail directly, using the address on their web page: so far I've had two messages back from their mail server telling me that it's having trouble delivering the message. If I can't get a simple e-mail to them...

But that's by-the-by.

This weekend, Carlsberg and the Daily Mirror are doing their bit to help the Great British Pub by running a promotion to get people through your local's door.

It's a great idea - as part of their Send Us Victorious​ promotion, every reader of the newspaper will get a token which they can exchange in return for one free pint of Carlsberg at participating pubs.

I applaud both parties for trying to help our trade.

Opening my promotional literature this morning, I couldn't help but smile when I read through the terms of the promotion. The offer is for this Saturday only, to all 1.3 million readers of the Daily Mirror.

But it's this line that really made me smile: "The vouchers can be redeemed on Saturday 10th October, which helps to drive footfall into your pub for the lucrative Ukraine v England fixture."

A match so lucrative that only cinema goers and laptop users are going to be able to watch it.

I'm looking forward to taking part in the promotion - though quite where I'm going to fit all 1.3 million Daily Mirror readers, I'm not sure - as, like many pubs, I could do with the extra footfall. I just hope the customers aren't too disappointed when they realise they can't watch the game here...