Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got a huge place for nostalgia. How I’d still go back to the time when Dave Edwards still played for Wolves, even though Ruben Neves has probably smacked that thought into the top corner since then. How I’d love to go back to 2009 to see Jenson Button romp to his title again. How I’d love to go back to 2019 when life seemed so much… simpler. However, if there’s one thing that’s been forgotten in a year of face masks and lockdowns, is the Saturday afternoon football slot. It used to be the highlight of the weekend, sticking Soccer Saturday on and having a minor heart attack every time the Vidiprinter moved a muscle the merest of millimetres; alas, it’s only Accrington Stanley getting a man sent off. While it was no doubt the best move to televise all the Premier League games live, I must admit it’s taken the sheen off watching my beloved Wolves on tele for the ‘big’ game. Perhaps this is the person who’s supported a championship for the most of his 21 year-old life speaking, but I digress.
Maybe lockdown has given the impetus the Premier League needed to change the way their games are broadcast. The fact that not everyone can afford a season ticket, nor can access a season ticket due to lengthy waiting lists, added to the rise of the internet has meant a lot of people choose to find illegal streams of their team’s matches. Needless to say, the fact that before lockdown, the only legal means to watch every single live match was behind three separate paywalls further compounds this issue. I am well aware the more than symbiotic relationship between Sky and the Premier League have made football what it is today, but for it to continue to charge full pricing across three paywall broadcasters during a purse tightening lockdown is morally dubious. Add this to the cost of purchasing the Sky box or BT equivalent, as well as the monthly fees needed that don’t include the sports packages. Supporting your club should not be that expensive in 2021.
The introduction of Amazon into the fold in 2019, whilst angering fans for an additional cost on top of BT and Sky Sports has been a reasonable success. They showed you can provide a quality broadcast over the internet whilst not needing the peripherals needed with satellite TV. As long as you had an Amazon Prime subscription, you could watch on any device, you don’t even need a top-of-the-range tele, with devices making screens ‘smart’ for a smaller up-front fee. This is considerably cheaper than the £45 per month Sky Sports subscription, which was being charged even when you had no guarantee your club was even being broadcast that month. In the 19/20 season it would’ve cost you ~£907 to watch all live games legally across all three platforms. That’s the same cost for a Man United fan who let’s say have 95% of their games broadcast live, as well as further games for cup runs at home as well as on the continent, compared to Burnley who let’s say have 50% of their games broadcast and don’t have continental football to contend and who probably haven’t made it past the fourth round of either domestic cup (sorry Burnley fans). The current model cannot be fair for all supporters. It needs shaking up.
What if the Premier League launched an Over The Top (OTT) broadcast service? It naturally broadcasts every game live, with let’s say 30 minutes of pre and post-match content, there’s a few magazine shows or original content pieces, as well as access to the visual archive of the last 30 years or so of Premier League football. It’s available on devices with an internet connection for a fee of £14 per month. That’s the price of a 4K Netflix subscription, and is over half the price of a Sky Sports subscription per month, and guarantees you’ll watch your team play. That’s a more sustainable financial model for lockdown at least, and while the price point is lower, the Premier League has opened itself up to a much wider audience that may already be priced out of watching it. You could easily surpass the existing broadcasting revenue. Even then you can offer much more flexibility to the subscriptions as well. Now TV already offers day passes, perhaps a highlights subscription for those fans who’ve seen the game at the stadium but just want to see a goal clearer, both being significantly cheaper than the £14. It would’ve been beneficial during lockdown, it should be beneficial after it.
The logistics of this obviously need ironing out, you can’t imagine the analysis of Jamie Carragher or Gary Neville, as entertaining as it is, would be easy to sell to France, Latin America or Japan, so the system would need adapting on a market-by-market basis. However, the benefit to the fans and the potential benefits to shareholders could be far greater. Being a fan should be gauged on your devotion to your club, not how deeply your pockets are lined.
If the broadcast revenue to clubs is also greater than the current £135 million per year as is the case, managing the distribution of this wealth beyond the Premier League also needs to be managed. It is unacceptable that established Premier League clubs of my childhood like Bolton were on the verge of liquidation. Even in the Championship, the distribution of wealth is a yawning chasm between the Norwiches and the Wycombes and Lutons.
The 3 o’clocks continued to exist to maintain the good attendances at the grounds, but if anything, lockdown has proved there’s nothing like A, being in the crowd when there’s a big goal, or B, having an actual crowd at the game. There’s huge wating lists for season tickets, so to claim the broadcast of every game live denies crowds is preposterous, and arguably would be obsolete if ticket prices were regulated properly. The increasing talk of the ‘big six’ clubs wanting more power with Project Big Picture and further talk of a breakaway super league circulating the media again, it is clear that change is needed at the top of the game to make the financial playing field more sustainable in the lower tiers of the game, particularly in a post covid world. Making football more financially accessible to the fans could be the start of this.
Maybe it’s because I don’t know what day of the week it is anymore (it’s a Monday right?) but I’ve not missed the Saturday 3pm slot, I’ve seen my team more than ever in the past few months, and despite the fact it’s not always been a good thing, it’s certainly brought me closer to my club. The nostalgia of Soccer Saturday and waiting for Match of the Day has worn off now. It’s time for change in the Premier League and this time it’s time to put the fans back to the number one priority.
George Talks 