Football and the Coronavirus

[BaZ87]

No, as in your first point is kinda irrelevant as the people by and large complaining about spending are those supporting the rich clubs which will do fine regardless as you've said due to the frequency at which they are already televised? The group you point at being hypocritical are not likely the fans of teams that benefit most of this scheme so the hypocrisy pair with this decision?

I mean I've watched a lot of garbage match ups since lockdown that I most likely wouldn't have before, I'm sure others are the same. And for your final point yeah agree I pretty much said the same initially, but thats not the scenario we're in.

Answering your first question, no. If Liverpool are generating £3m per game from matchday revenue and are being shown on Sky anyway, they've lost £3m. If Burnley are making £500k per game and aren't being shown on Sky, they could maybe recoup half of that money. The end result, Liverpool lose £3m and Burnley lose £250k per game. I'm not sure how Liverpool, or any bigger club are doing just fine.

Who will be making money out of the adverts that Sky will include for good measure with your £15? To pretend Sky/BT won't be making money off the back of this is laughable.

My favourite is the one you get where there's barely a minute to kick off, go on squeeze a Bet365 advert in there.

There's no comment on who will be paid from any ad revenue but for a match getting 10-20k viewers, I doubt that will amount to much.

If the PPV model is embraced who do you think is going to benefit more?

Man Utd have 650m fans Worldwide.

The PL aren't going to move to a PPV model though - this is purely a short term thing. TV rights are sold collectively and for that to change 14 clubs would have to vote for it and that will not happen. It would be suicide for all but 3 or 4 clubs. What we will see in the future is the PL moving towards their own, netflix type service however I suspect that might be years away, in the UK at least. It might happen overseas fairly soon though.

 

[Stumble Bum]

This isn't for supporters that are paying for Sky, BT etc. This £15 option is replacing the £20-100 match day ticket. How can people not understand this?

Oh come on, now you're comparing this as a replacement of the experience of going to a live match. Fans that go to matches will probably be happy paying their £30+ per match compared to paying £15 to only watch it on the tv. The two just don't compare, completely different experiences.

 

[Purdy]

Answering your first question, no. If Liverpool are generating £3m per game from matchday revenue and are being shown on Sky anyway, they've lost £3m. If Burnley are making £500k per game and aren't being shown on Sky, they could maybe recoup half of that money. The end result, Liverpool lose £3m and Burnley lose £250k per game. I'm not sure how Liverpool, or any bigger club are doing just fine.

I don't like the hypocrisy and entitlement of most football supporters tbh. You only have to look at posts on here or twitter during every transfer window and you'll find countless supporters bitching and moaning about their club not paying 10s if not 100s of millions on transfers but then these same people will complain when clubs are trying to claw back some of the revenue they've lost.

I probably should have also added that this isn't going to benefit the biggest clubs much

My point is this. You're saying it doesn't benefit the biggest clubs much.
Complaining about this decision if you're a fan of a bigger club isn't really hypocritical then, no?

Also big cba on even thinking hard about it but surely your point about people complaining clubs not spending xyz, those amounts are getting spent and expected due to the ever increasing amount of people paying for numerous sports subscriptions and they all increase in price?

 

[BaZ87]

Oh come on, now you're comparing this as a replacement of the experience of going to a live match. Fans that go to matches will probably be happy paying their £30+ per match compared to paying £15 to only watch it on the tv. The two just don't compare, completely different experiences.

It is a completely different experience and is priced as such. This £15 cost will probably be split between an average of 3 people, brining the cost down to £5 per person compared with your average PL match ticket at £50?

Again, these are not games that were due to be televised and made up part of your Sky or BT subscription. If you don't want to watch them then you don't have to pay for them. You've not lost out in any way as you had no option of watching them before. This is a short term option compromise that allows match going supporters a chance to watch every game, as they did before.

My point is this. You're saying it doesn't benefit the biggest clubs much.
Complaining about this decision if you're a fan of a bigger club isn't really hypocritical then, no?

Also big cba on even thinking hard about it but surely your point about people complaining clubs not spending xyz, those amounts are getting spent and expected due to the ever increasing amount of people paying for numerous sports subscriptions and they all increase in price?

I didn't say only supporters of bigger clubs are hypocritical or self entitled, did I? I'm pretty sure you'll find the same proportion of Burnley supporters complaining that their club didn't spend any money in the summer as you will find Utd supporters complaining that they didn't sign Sancho. Obviously there's just less Burnley supporters so you don't hear them as much.

Whether it's the entitlement of wanting your club to sign x y and z but not thinking about where the money will come from or simply the entitlement of supporters wanting these games for free, just because for a very short time they were made available for free, it's the same thing. It's probably not even a football specific thing either although I'm not sure that if McDonalds gave free fries with every burger for a couple of months that people would be moaning when that offer ends and they have to pay for their fries in future.

You signed up to Sky and BT knowing how many games were included in your subscription. That has not changed. You were lucky to get a few extra games for a few months but that wasn't part of the deal. If you want these extra games then you can still have them but they come at a cost. And before you complain about the cost think about how many times you've complained about your club not signing x. There will be a lot of supporters that this point doesn't apply to but there will be 10x as many that it does.

 

[Pigeon_Killer]

The only plus point for this will be if clubs make way more money from their own subscriptions per game than they do from Sky and BT. Will make it easier to move away and offer their own channels when the big contracts run out.

 

[explicit4u]

I'll be interested in viewing figures for this, using West Brom vs Burnley is an unfair example, there's a well supported team involved in most fixtures for PPV:

Chelsea v Southampton
Leicester City v Aston Villa
Newcastle v Manchester United
Sheffield United v Fulham
West Brom v Burnley
Arsenal v Leicester
Aston Villa v Leeds
Brighton v West Brom
Fulham v Crystal Palace
Liverpool v Sheffield United

Arsenal Leicester will be a good test, big game, 2 well supported teams, Saturday afternoon.

 

[BaZ87]

The only plus point for this will be if clubs make way more money from their own subscriptions per game than they do from Sky and BT. Will make it easier to move away and offer their own channels when the big contracts run out.

This isn't going to happen. TV rights are sold collectively and that's not going to change any time soon as it requires 14 clubs to agree to it and it would be suicide for them to do it. The PL did try a collective PPV model once before if you remember (Prem+?) but they binned it very quickly. They still make more money selling the biggest games to Sky or BT and there isn't the demand to show the smallest games on PPV.

A netflix type situation is going to happen eventually but I suspect Sky & BT will pay enough to keep the UK rights for sometime.

I'll be interested in viewing figures ....

It won't be big numbers, even for the bigger clubs. Arsenal sell 60k tickets and even if all of these are prepared to pay for the PPV (which you won't), you won't end up with 60k people actually paying £15. You'll have families and friends watching it together at home in groups of 2's, 3's and 4's and you'll have larger numbers watching through a single purchase at a pub. You'll also have some people lost to illegal methods which we're not going to discuss here (@Pigeon_Killer @Stumble Bum). Then of all the non match goers, who have either got used to not watching non televised games and or watch through those other methods, I doubt you'll get many paying the £15.

I think if you get 1/3 of a clubs typical attendance you'll have done well.

edit: I probably should say, for around half the league there's little benefit to this and that is one arguement as to why they shouldn't be doing this. But at least 14 clubs wanted it and ironically, it'll probably be the smaller clubs that were most in favour.

 

[Stumble Bum]

Please spare a thought for these premier league clubs who could only afford to spend £1.2 billion this transfer window. They are very hard done by and therefore fans must be charged £15 per game.

 

[FMF]

I don't see what the issue is, if you don't want to spend £15 then just wait for MOTD. No-one is forcing anyone to do anything, it's just the PL giving fans a choice.

 

[woppy101]

I for one have no intention of paying any more money than I currently pay now and will find other means to watch my team

 

[Stumble Bum]

I don't see what the issue is, if you don't want to spend £15 then just wait for MOTD. No-one is forcing anyone to do anything, it's just the PL giving fans a choice.

Why in this day and age can fans not pay a 'reasonable' amount to watch their team in every game. We're one of the few countries and sports in the world where you're not allowed to follow your own team in every match. It's ridiculous. Foreign fans get every single game for every single premier league team for a fraction of the price. Why can't English fans have the same?

 

[FMF]

Why in this day and age can fans not pay a 'reasonable' amount to watch their team in every game. We're one of the few countries and sports in the world where you're not allowed to follow your own team in every match. It's ridiculous. Foreign fans get every single game for every single premier league team for a fraction of the price. Why can't English fans have the same?

Because the EPL is a money making machine, if you want to watch Salah, De Bruyne, Auba then you have to pay up. All sports that have a major following/ growth plan are moving in the PPV direction (F1, Cricket, NFL), yes its not appealing and I personally don't/ wont pay for it but fans cant have it both ways, high quality football with some of the worlds best players and cheap prices.

Imagine if the EPL didn't get the TV revenue and wasnt the most popular league in the world, we would be talking about Chris Wood at Burney rather than the players I mentioned earlier

 

[BaZ87]

Why in this day and age can fans not pay a 'reasonable' amount to watch their team in every game. We're one of the few countries and sports in the world where you're not allowed to follow your own team in every match. It's ridiculous. Foreign fans get every single game for every single premier league team for a fraction of the price. Why can't English fans have the same?

This is a completely separate argument and not as straight forward as you make it out to be.

Regarding the amount of games available. One of the reasons why we don't have 380 PL games broadcast every season is because there is not enough TV slots. Broadcasters keep coming up with more slots so that more games can be shown every 3 years however they're met with opposition from fan groups complaining about match going fans are being asked to travel from London to Liverpool or Liverpool to Southampton and back at x time on a Sunday night or a bank holiday monday.

And regarding the costs. It's always more expensive to watch a domestic league than it is to watch it from overseas. There's greater demand in the UK so Sky & BT alone pay more for the UK rights than the rest of the world combined - a consequence of that is they have to charge more. Is that any different in Spain with La Liga? Now the PL could turn around to Sky and say no, pay us half as much but cut the cost of your subs but then you can forget about having the best players in the PL.

A possible silver lining of the financial impact of covid could be a reduction in overseas and domestic TV rights. This might force the PL's hand in regards to starting their own platform and offering 380 games per season without having to sub to Sky and pay for all the extra stuff you might not want. I suspect that this will be offered overseas first and could be 5-8 years away in the UK though.

 

[Kenai]

I should have added to the initial post, Sky and BT won't be profiting from this. All profit will go to the clubs to cover some of their lost match day revenue. Again, this set-up isn't designed to make more money out of people subbing to Sky or BT, it's simply a short term replacement for supporters who previously attending games.

If it's the case that Sky and BT literally won't make a penny, that's fine. If they're skimming even a small profit then I'm expecting the 'selected for TV' games to start swinging more to crap low fanbase games whilst the PPV games become the big fanbase games.

If it's genuinely all going to the clubs though, it makes sense.

Normally it's 'stadium or nothing', we had a couple of months of 'go on then, have it all in your existing sub fees because we don't know what to do yet', now we're getting 'PPV or nothing' until fans are allowed back.

Nobody is being charged for anything they wouldn't normally have to pay for, except perhaps season ticket holders of tight clubs.

 

[tracertong]

£15 a match gtfo.

 

[robfosters]

I’m not going to argue against it otherwise I will be contradicting myself as before the lockdown I was regularly saying how there should be an option to watch all your own teams games on a paying basis. As Baz says, I think we’ve been too spoilt by getting all the games included in our subs and now expect it forever, which is never going to happen.

Another plus point for me is that it will allow us to get back to a regular schedule of around 7 games on Saturday, 2 on Sunday and 1 on Monday. As good as it is to be able to watch all the games, I think the staggered KO times are a bit tiresome and make traditional programmes such as MOTD a bit of a non event. Clubs and supporters also need a bit of regularity of times they are playing.

 

[Shamikebab]

I'm fine with it being PPV, but the price is beyond stupid. Detached from reality stupid.

 

[robfosters]

I'm fine with it being PPV, but the price is beyond stupid. Detached from reality stupid.

Should be £9.99. Could be categorised too like match tickets are. For example, £14.99 for cat A, most of which will be on sky anyway, £11.99 for Cat B and £9.99 for Cat C. Most of the cat C games will be on the PPV service and the cheaper price could encourage more people to buy them which would bring in more cash. It’s also fairer for the fans of weaker teams who are barely televised.

 

[woppy101]

Any other NUFC fans one here feel like saying to rival fans “TOLD YOU SO” or is it just me hahahaha, shown the previous 6 months for free, in the middle of a pandemic, People struggling to make ends meet and this is what you do to them.

 

[BaZ87]

What did you tell us?