TV was the goose that laid football’s golden egg but might also be the one that kills it
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Sky Sports tried to generate excitement for Wednesday’s fixture list unveiling by urging viewers to tune in as “we gear up for another bumper season of live football.”
But, like the price of Bovril, this once-eagerly anticipated pre-season moment long ago ceased to be of much significance.
June's version of the fixture list is merely a rough guide which will be mapped out in finer detail when the TV companies get round to it.
And it will be even less relevant when the Premier League sell more than half of its 380 games for live coverage in the next round of talks.
At last week’s AGM, club chairmen were told that this could work through new, lucrative kick-off times, including Saturday nights, to hit afternoon audiences in America, and Sunday mornings, to pick up peak-time viewers in the Far East.
(Photo: Rex Features)
Which is news which will go down like a cup of cold sick among fans, especially the most devoted who follow their teams away from home. Fans who, when they complain, are labelled Luddites who are halting evolution and need to accept “progress”.
Maybe it works both ways, though.
Something else came up at that meeting which should concern 14 of the Premier League clubs now happy to hang their fans out to dry so long as the global cash keeps pouring in — the Big Six once again raised their demands for the overseas rights money to be distributed, not across the board, but on the basis of appearances.
The owners of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Man United and Tottenham hear the Premier League boast that last season “matches were available to watch in one billion homes in 188 countries” and are asking “But who is it they all want to watch?”
The issue was first raised in 2011 when Liverpool’s then-MD Ian Ayre argued the bulk of the then £1.4 billion kitty, should go to the big clubs because, “If you’re in Kuala Lumpur, there isn’t anyone subscribing to ESPN to watch Bolton.”
(Photo: Liverpool FC via Getty)
He was rightly shot down, but the subject never went away.
Especially when the overseas deals for 2016-19 soared to £3.2 billion, and the contracts being signed now, such as the £564million one with China, have shot up twelve-fold.
This proposed change to the payment structure will be voted on in the autumn with the non-Big Six clubs able to shoot it down as a two-thirds majority is needed. But for how long?
It’s only a matter of time before the big clubs threaten that if their pulling power isn’t reflected in their slice of the cake they’ll do their own deals with foreign markets.
Especially when, mainly due to streaming, Sky’s domestic audience fell by 14% last season, meaning their current £11million-a-game model might soon be unsustainable and clubs will need to better “monetise their global brand” to keep up with the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid.
(Photo: AFP/Getty)
Those two clubs dominate the TV money in Spain, hence a league full of weak, underfunded clubs who rarely even beat the big boys let alone challenge them for titles.
Such a model would be disastrous for the Premier League and its selling-point as the world’s most competitive league. But that’s the model the Big Six aspire to, as the game continues to grow across the globe and they see a way of catching the Spanish giants.
Which means it’s lose/lose for all outside the elite, because if they let the richest take the lion’s share of the overseas money they fall behind, and if they don’t and the rich go their own way, the League’s competitiveness would be finished.
TV was the goose that laid English football’s golden egg, but if it’s not careful, it might also be the one that kills it. Because the majority of Premier League clubs may soon find out, as match-going fans have, that “progress’ has a nasty habit of biting you on the backside.