Publicans throughout Scotland are breaking the law by using decoders to tap into the Arabic station, which bought the rights from Setanta to broadcast SPL matches as they happen in the Middle East.

Now customers can watch big games in their local, with the volume turned down and the Arabic analysis replaced by Radio Scotland's commentary.

"What we have here is a breach of copyright," said SPL secretary Ian Blair. "We are policing this matter and an evidence-gathering team is currently collecting the information we need.

"We certainly intend to take court action against the guilty parties. Many bars quite blatantly advertise the fact that they show our matches.

"The advertising itself is not illegal but the broadcasting of the games is. No one has actively attacked pubs for doing this before but we are determined to do so and, consequently, I can't say too much more about it.

"However, I know that the Premier League in England will be taking similar action because they are the victims of the same problem."

Colin Davidson, the head of UK production for Setanta, believes the SPL had no alternative but to get tough with rogue pubs. "This is a massive problem for the SPL," he said. "It's nothing less than total piracy and it's hurting them financially because many people are now watching matches in pubs instead of going to the ground.

"It's damaging for them and I've been aware of this activity for some time.

Al Jazeera are not at fault here because they have paid for the right to broadcast these matches in their own territory. It's the pubs with the dodgy boxes who are at fault.

"We haven't been too affected because it tends to be matches at Ibrox and Parkhead which they show live. Since they take place on a Saturday and our own live games are on Sunday afternoons it's not such an issue for us. But the SPL are right to go after these people."