Publicans are calling for engagement with Sky Ireland over the price of its services when indoor hospitality resumes next month.
Premises that could not facilitate outdoor drinking and dining will, as it stands, finally reopen their doors on July 5.
However, Irish pub owners have come out against the "excessive pricing" of Sky's services which will return to their pre-pandemic levels next month.
Since March 2020, Sky suspended its billing and services for customers who have been unable to open because of the impact of the pandemic on their business or due to Government restrictions.
When outdoor hospitality resumed on June 7, some premises chose to reactivate their Sky subscription to show live sport on screens in outdoor areas.
However, so-called 'wet pubs' argue that they are now effectively reopening as restaurants and with reduced capacity and people not sitting at bars, there is not enough business to justify the price of the services.
Noel Anderson, Chair of the Licensed Vintners Association and Managing Director with two Dublin bars, The Bridge 1859 and Lemon and Duke, has called for engagement from Sky to review its terms for pubs reopening in less than two weeks' time.
"At the moment we're trading under restrictions, we can't have anybody at the counter, we are currently trading outside and it looks like that might run on even longer," he told the Irish Mirror.
"We have suffered the worst 16 months in the hospitality industry, Sky are a massive corporation and they are planning on July 5 to automatically switch all of [the services] back on and charging the full rate at a time where there's little to no sports on the television, you can't have anybody at the counter, you can't trade normally."
Mr Anderson says he pays up to €2,350 a month for his Sky service at The Bridge and describes the attitude on pricing from the company as "a gun to the head, take it or leave it".
He is facing "a real dilemma" over whether to continue his subscription, while other business owners in similar situations are questioning whether costs in the region of €27,000 a year are justified.
"They have had no engagement with the industry whatsoever around this, and we're just looking for them to sit down and come to some sort of reasonable solution," he said.
"The problem here is that your Sky fee is usually linked to your license band, so depending on how well your pub is trading, you go up the bands."
As a result of the pandemic, most pubs would be on the bottom band because of reduced earnings, and so will be trying to move up the order to a higher band.
"What we're asking Sky to do is to talk to publicans to come up with some sort of fair, reasonable deal so that customers can come in and enjoy whatever sport is on the TV and to give publicans a fair chance to get back on their feet," he said.
"It's a massive expense, a lot of customers don't realise how expensive Sky is, it's monstrous.
"Pubs are effectively turning into restaurants at the moment and they can't justify that expense."
Mr Anderson added that pub owners may be so busy preparing to reopen that they might not be aware that their Sky contracts will resume again next month.
He hopes that Sky will sit down with industry bodies such as the LVA and Vintners' Federation of Ireland and come up with a solution so they can communicate a message to their members.
Numerous publicans have contacted him about the issue, while many are planning to simply cancel the service.
Mr Anderson added: "Sky can fix this problem by going, 'We don't want to lose these all these people long-term so short-term, we're going to have to look after them and get them back on their feet'."
A source that works closely with Sky echoed that customers are unlikely to be aware of the cost associated with sports TV packages.
They added that many pubs have had their license band downgraded since March 2020, which is what the price of Sky's services is based on, yet the cost of resuming services next month will be the same as before the pandemic.
They also claimed that many pubs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been offered a reduced deal.
In a statement to the Irish Mirror, a spokesperson for Sky said: “With the planned reopening of hospitality indoors from July 5 we have notified our customers that their Sky subscription will resume from that date at their pre-Covid pricing, which is in keeping with our approach across all the territories in which we operate.
“We appreciate that this has been a challenging time for the sector. If a customer wants to talk to us about their individual circumstances, then they can call our customer service teams who would be happy to help them.”
