The inimitable Ken Barkway vents his spleen at the confounded Premier League and their ill-thought through PPV idea…
So it’s trickling out that the Premier League’s big idea to let fans see their team play all of their games through a Pay Per View (PPV) platform hasn’t had the expected take up. Well let’s be frank, it’s an embarrassment. This appears to be no surprise to anyone but the Premier League. Even by their own standards they have been tone deaf to both national mood and the economy.
They clearly don’t understand their own product and the market in which it operates. They simply do not understand football or fans. For too long fans have been the loyal shills who shifted satellite dishes and built an empire. I know Sky and BT are quick to say that this isn’t their pricing model. But neither did they push back and tell the PL that this won’t work.
As pretty much everyone on Twitter (other social media are available) instantly surmised, they made a number of dreadful mistaken assumptions when setting the pricing:
They considered it cheap compared to physically attending a match.
The looked at Boxing and other one-off PPV events as a benchmark.
So let’s consider these two wildly fallacious assumptions:
Firstly – the PPV offering is nothing like attending a match. You’re not meeting friends, it’s not an event, you are sitting at home while the world is barely ticking over outside. Even on TV it stirs little more emotional investment than watching training. The piped crowd noise is even worse. They don’t seem understand the difference between attending an actual event and a pale substitute. I’d be interested to know why they think it is that football clubs are considered to be community assets.
Secondly it isn’t a series of one-off premium events. Realistically it’s the games that the TV companies just didn’t want. It is disproportionately the teams outside the “Big Six” that weren’t deemed attractive enough to wider, non-partisan audiences. This is also patently unfair – if you support our neighbours Fulham say – not many of your matches are selected by BT or Sky for regular screening. So, you could conceivably have four matches available only through PPV. Suddenly you’re looking at £60 in a month – which is season ticket levels of expense – to watch your games from the comfort of your own home. So far from one-off and sorry chaps; far from premium.
The competition for money and attention isn’t other sports – it’s the slightly laggy “free” illegal streams. I’d expect that if they’d priced the “unwanted” matches at a fiver, people would have in all likelihood have chosen the convenience and quality over the illegal substitute. Whilst I don’t have an elasticity curve on TV football pricing, I’d also be fairly confident that the uptake would be more than three times the uptake of the £15 package. Even for those such as Fulham – watching all of your games in a 4-game month would be a more affordable – but hardly trifling – £20.
I’ve also seen “season tickets” mooted as a solution. I think this is likely to be a non-starter as the future beyond the TV matches announcements is unknown, as is the return of fans, in whatever limited capacity, to grounds.
In the end many fans are already paying Sky, BT and Amazon the best part of £1,000 per year to see the selected games. Some have had some season ticket money taken by their clubs. People are unemployed, furloughed, uncertain and have been exploited more than enough. It has to stop.
Finally, well played the much-maligned football fan for diverting “PPV” and returned season ticket money into the overused and underappreciated food banks. When needed we can be the best of humanity.
If you want to donate to Chelsea’s local Foodbank as the Chelsea supporters have been doing for over three years via the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust, you can do so by clicking here
