Topic: Premier league tv deal announcement

[Peabee]

Wouldn't surprise me if the PL moved towards selling matches directly to the public after this next deal. This is little short of a disaster for them, certainly won't have been in the planning of the clubs for a decline in domestic TV revenue.

Agreed. On the contrary, I think it’s obvious clubs had planned for another increase in revenue from this TV deal. Either the bubble is going to burst or the top clubs will start pushing for their own TV deals. LFC and MUFC would make massive money from their own rights.

[TepidT2O]

Foreign rights are still predicted to increase massively though...

[Peabee]

Foreign rights are still predicted to increase massively though...

Thank fuck for Brexit and the devaluation of sterling.   

[swoopy]

BT get package A

Will this be the first time in the premier league era that the Liverpool vs United won’t be broadcasted on SKY?

Why would it be ?

Sky get first pick every weekend

[rich87]

My question would be how much would you be prepared to pay the club (Per Month) if you could stream/watch the club channel with every game live.

Lets say you can watch 25 games now for Liverpool (Out of a possible 50 for example) and Sky package is roughly £70 for HD with Football and BT is about £15 with HD and all channels. That's £85 per month x 12 = £1020/25 so minimum your paying now is about £40 per match.

Lets say Liverpool went with a price of £75 a month to watch every game live a season (£900 season ticket) would you pay it? (Bear in mind what is the price now for LFCTV about £7 and that gets you Under 23 games and highlights etc)

[Statto Red]

BT get package A

Will this be the first time in the premier league era that the Liverpool vs United won’t be broadcasted on SKY?

No, BT only have 20 second picks, & 12 fifth picks from the package they've won, & BT can only show the same team 6 times in the season on this package, for a full breakdown of the packages & picks.  https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/918497/Premier-League-TV-deals-rights-Sky-Sports-BT-Sport

Be interesting if the fixture falls before Champions League matchday the following midweek as might get BT/SKY swapping slots.

[KissThisGuy]

My question would be how much would you be prepared to pay the club (Per Month) if you could stream/watch the club channel with every game live.

Lets say you can watch 25 games now for Liverpool (Out of a possible 50 for example) and Sky package is roughly £70 for HD with Football and BT is about £15 with HD and all channels. That's £85 per month x 12 = £1020/25 so minimum your paying now is about £40 per match.

Lets say Liverpool went with a price of £75 a month to watch every game live a season (£900 season ticket) would you pay it? (Bear in mind what is the price now for LFCTV about £7 and that gets you Under 23 games and highlights etc)

That's a ridiculous price point. Nobody is paying that for just Liverpool games on TV.

[Alf]

Wouldn't surprise me if the PL moved towards selling matches directly to the public after this next deal. This is little short of a disaster for them, certainly won't have been in the planning of the clubs for a decline in domestic TV revenue.

There are 2 deals to be done yet. It maybe the case that it has hit saturation point. I do wonder if some clubs will push to sell their own packages next time around.

[drmick]

There are 2 deals to be done yet. It maybe the case that it has hit saturation point. I do wonder if some clubs will push to sell their own packages next time around.

The insinuation is that either the reserve price wasn't met for those two packages, or there were no bids at all.

[Something Worse]

That's a ridiculous price point. Nobody is paying that for just Liverpool games on TV.

15 pounds a month seems like the sweet spot

[Mashy-rawr!nooo]

BT content just to sit with 20 games and focus on Europe? Thought they'd use the chance to push on and grab more from sky.

[Statto Red]

Not surprising no one has won packages F & G yet, both packages are for midweek & bank holiday fixtures, & they go for peanuts as they're now worth bidding big money for, might have been more enticing had the Premier League threw in more weekend fixtures with those packages, hmmm Wonder if the BBC might throw in a bid for packages F & G?

[rich87]

That's a ridiculous price point. Nobody is paying that for just Liverpool games on TV.

Explain why its a ridiculous price point. I pointed out in another thread here that people are paying a fortune for Sports at present. If it was £20 a game you would get people paying it. Right now PER game its around about 10.3 million sky/bt are paying. With the new deal that is going to increase to 11.5 ish perhaps.

How many supporters of Liverpool alone are going to actually pay for a tv subscription? Lets say out of our population there's 1 million Liverpool fans (Yes of course it could be more or less but we're averaging all clubs in the league and will have to base it of each club, we are the heaviest supported club but they would all charge roughly equal amounts)

Lets say 10% immediately sign up to a subscription at £75 a month (average of 4 games a month with Champions League/FA cup - can be more of course) but lets say we have 50 games a season - that equates to £18 per game. Already sounds much cheaper doesn't it.

100'000 paying £18 per game is £1.8 million per game. (Remember what Sky/BT are paying? - £10.3 million per game)

Remember not everybody is going to pay a subscription - some will still try and get it free (Even with the likes of spotify, itunes, etc people still download music)

Not everybody would be willing to move to the new model because they already pay a Sky subscription why should they add to the bills?

People are already paying close to £60 a ticket for 1 game at Anfield. This is £18 to watch it on screen.

Boxing is already about £20-25 per fight. Are you suggesting the most watched sport should be cheaper to watch than boxing?

Someone else suggested £15 as a sweet spot, but at £4 a game, I'm unsure if that is the sweet spot for the fans or for the clubs. At £4 per game to reach my £1.8 million you would already need 500'000 supporters.

Does anyone know the break down of the £10.2 million per game now? And what that will increase to per club/per game from the tv deal?

Also bear in mind what it would actually cost the club to produce football with the coverage sky already does? The camera's, the microphones the production teams, everything that goes into producing a football game on television isn't exactly cheap....

And you think they would sell that to you for £4? This is football we're talking about? This isn't Spotify/Netflix. This is as game people follow passionately. You pay £60 for a shirt. Are you saying the price of a shirt = 1/3 of a years payment to watch your team play?

Remember at £4 to watch on a screen you can have your mates round to watch, family members round to watch - Suddenly you have 10 people watching for £4 or 40p per person.

That is why not everybody will pay a subscription and why the clubs would NEED to charge way more than £15 a month.

[Gerry Attrick]

£75 a month to watch a handful of games a month on the telly would be absolutely mad.

[rich87]

£75 a month to watch a handful of games a month on the telly would be absolutely mad.

Why? I've shown why it's not above. I've explained that actually £18 per game for instance isn't mad at all. Especially if your family were all there watching with you. Lets say you have a family of 4 watching the game at Anfield - What would you pay? £170-200. A family of 4 watching a game on tv would cost you £18.

Tell me whats mad about that?

Lets say you and 5 mates all pay for 1 subscription to watch in 1 persons house each week - that's £3.60 each per game.

And again I point out the price of LFCtv already £7 a month - without watching any game live. Are you suggesting that £8 extra per month or £2 extra per game is going to make LFCtv stream there own games? I don't think so.

[CraigDS]

No one pays £75 a month just for Sky Sports to just watch a handful of one teams games. They get countless other channels, content and services (pause, record, etc).

You're going about the maths wrong. Clubs will want to increase what they are earning above what they do now. You need to seperate the domestic income per season from our share of the foreign market (assuming this is still sold collectively - although that's where the big money is selling it ourselves) and then divide this by the approx number of potential U.K. subscribers to a channel showing purely our content.

That will give you more of an idea of what you'd need to charge. Roughly, of course as the likes of Sky, etc will take a cut to allow us to distribute it via their platforms.

[OsirisMVZ]

How much is Netflix? DAZN? You're competing with them and would have to undercut as there's less new content a month from LFC than there would be in a week from one of those subscription services.

[Lush is the best medicine...]

If clubs sell their own rights it’ll be for the games not picked up by bt and sky

[rich87]

No one pays £75 a month just for Sky Sports to just watch a handful of one teams games. They get countless other channels, content and services (pause, record, etc).

You're going about the maths wrong. Clubs will want to increase what they are earning above what they do now. You need to seperate the domestic income per season from our share of the foreign market (assuming this is still sold collectively - although that's where the big money is selling it ourselves) and then divide this by the approx number of potential U.K. subscribers to a channel showing purely our content.

That will give you more of an idea of what you'd need to charge. Roughly, of course as the likes of Sky, etc will take a cut to allow us to distribute it via their platforms.

That's exactly what i've done. Right now its £10.2 million per domestic game. How that is divided i'm not certain. I also talk about the potential number of subscribers - and the issues of such a model.

I.E. we may have 1 million fans but - people will share subscriptions, watch with the family members, not everybody takes up a subscription. As you rightly point out clubs will want to increase there revenue not decrease it.

So how much does it cost to put on a football game on television each game? With my rough calculations above PER game 100'000 supporters spending £18 i.e. £1.8 million per game, of that someone will have to pay to produce that content for television. Lets say Sky/BT for example allow us to use there service. They charge us £500'000 per game. That means we are suddenly making £1.3 million per game. (Right now Sky pay 10.2 million per game - how that is broken down is the question I asked) But at 1.3 million per game for us that would be £65 million in revenue. I would imagine our club must be easily getting that per season already from Sky.

At £4 per game to reach that figure you would need minimum 500'000 subscribers in the UK alone. Which you haven't factored in - people already go to football matches (not just to watch there own team) during that time. Not everybody would be willing to pay for a subscription, and some would share that subscription with friends and family watching to.

It has to be priced similar to boxing for the clubs to get a similar revenue as they do now. Which is why perhaps of course - the subscription for each club actually doesn't work - because you the punter wouldn't pay the price that would need to be paid.

[Rush 82]

Hopefully puts a bit of a cap on the crazy transfer prices - footballers earn insane money for what they do 

[CraigDS]

Right, a quick look suggests we earned approx £70m last season from domestic TV income (£35m equal share, £35m facility payment due to how often we were on).

Now that’s effectively pure profit. We have no costs associated with creating content and distributing it. We would also only have the rights to our home games, so we’d have to pay other clubs for rights to show the away games.

How many fans do we have in the UK who would pay for the channel?

Let’s assume we needed £120m to cover costs and still make that £70m profit (total guess), if we charged £20 a month for our own channel, that would require approx 500k subscribers. £30 a month would require 333k subscribers.

[ManiacKop]

Or just stream games. Why pay that sort of money? I refuse to even pay for a tv license so I’m stuck with either a copy of the game, or go down the pub and buy a coke/pork scratchings.
To get sky sports would cost about a grand a year and I much prefer to go away for a break with the family than watch Stoke vs WBA on a Monday night which is billed as the biggest game ever.

I do like, and have liked, the one club season ticket for a while now. If it was just Liverpool games and at a decent price I would consider it (though that would mean getting a tv licence again).

Until then, sky and bt can kiss my ass. I’ll stick to the RAWK commentary team.

[rich87]

How much is Netflix? DAZN? You're competing with them and would have to undercut as there's less new content a month from LFC than there would be in a week from one of those subscription services.

Why? Netflix work on worldwide subscription models and are showing content everybody in the world wants to watch, therefore can attract more subscribers. Liverpool domestically would be competing with 72 other clubs in the football league, and not everybody on a domestic level will pay for that subscription. Just because we have say 2 million supporters in this country, some will be children, some will have a vague interest in us, some wouldn't pay a penny, some will still try stream for free, some don't have the time, Some will watch with family or friends every week. Therefore you have to charge accordingly to ensure you are still earning as much as you earn on Sky per game.

Remember people already pay £20-25 per boxing match.

Also remember we are already charging £7 a month for our tv service at it is. You would only be increasing that £8 (i.e. £2 each live game) is that worth it for the club?

[OsirisMVZ]

Hopefully puts a bit of a cap on the crazy transfer prices - footballers earn insane money for what they do 

Football has gone beyond a sport and they are now entertainers, kids look up to them like actors and pop stars. Ronaldo Neymar and Messi are in the top 20 most followed people on Instagram, they should be paid like their cultural peers.

it doesn't matter to Man Utd or Chelsea execs that their team play shit football for all 65 mins of play; did Pogba or Hazard do a neat flick to a team mate with no one around them for 10 yards? Yes so it looks good on a clip that they can sell off to foreign advertisers.

[CraigDS]

What the PL should really consider is a platform where THEY sell and air the matches directly.

They could still distribute a certain amount of the revenue collectively to keep all clubs happy, but they could sell individual club passes, all game passes, etc. And clubs could benefit from the numbers who buy their individual games with bonuses.

[rich87]

Right, a quick look suggests we earned approx £70m last season from domestic TV income (£35m equal share, £35m facility payment due to how often we were on).

Now that’s effectively pure profit. We have no costs associated with creating content and distributing it. We would also only have the rights to our home games, so we’d have to pay other clubs for rights to show the away games.

How many fans do we have in the UK who would pay for the channel?

Let’s assume we needed £120m to cover costs and still make that £70m profit (total guess), if we charged £20 a month for our own channel, that would require approx 500k subscribers. £30 a month would require 333k subscribers.

And I was working of 100'000 subscribers i.e. 4x the price of yours. Because not every supporter will pay for it. As the reasons I've outlined countless times. 500'000 pure Liverpool subscribers - that's before you factor in family members/friends sharing subscriptions etc.

[TepidT2O]

When we talk about even distribution of tv money... it’s probably the right decision...

But on the flip side, we all know which team gets the highest viewing figures.... don’t we?

[OsirisMVZ]

When we talk about even distribution of tv money... it’s probably the right decision...

But on the flip side, we all know which team gets the highest viewing figures.... don’t we?

I think for several years in a row now we've been the team with the most televised league games, there was also a big downturn in domestic CL tv ratings when we were out of the competition earlier in the decade.

[rich87]

When we talk about even distribution of tv money... it’s probably the right decision...

But on the flip side, we all know which team gets the highest viewing figures.... don’t we?

For how long though? We have been lucky in most peoples life times we've won a champions league, and in a lot of peoples lifetimes more trophies than that.

20 years from now - if we keep going the way we are going - with the big clubs spending obscene amounts (United, City, Chelsea, and perhaps Tottenham and Arsenal may join them) will we then be competing for those major trophies and therefore winning new fans.

It may make us more money now - but that short term greed could be our long term downfall.

[CraigDS]

And I was working of 100'000 subscribers i.e. 4x the price of yours. Because not every supporter will pay for it. As the reasons I've outlined countless times. 500'000 pure Liverpool subscribers - that's before you factor in family members/friends sharing subscriptions etc.

Yeah, I was more trying to show the possible numbers required at a reasonable price point that people would actually be prepared to pay.

It wouldn’t just be paid for via subscriptions remember, as we’d also have advertisers paying to market to a fairly large captive audience.

I think the biggest stumbling block would be obtaining the away games rights, as the ‘smaller’ clubs would just band together and charge a huge fee to replace what they are losing from a collective bargaining position. That’s why a PL channel of some sorts could be the answer.

[ManiacKop]

Football has gone beyond a sport and they are now entertainers, kids look up to them like actors and pop stars. Ronaldo Neymar and Messi are in the top 20 most followed people on Instagram, they should be paid like their cultural peers.

Aye. It’s a shame. It’s why there is no real connection with the fans anymore. It’s like an expensive pantomime.
The moment recently where Ronaldo was checking himself with a mirror after being injured was comical.

[TepidT2O]

For the four years (at least.... I haven’t seen figures for further back) we’ve drawn the biggest audiences for our matches.  Not hugely ahead of Manchester United, but consistently ahead.

Seems odd to me, give our relative fallow period, but that’s what the figures say. 

[rich87]

Yeah, I was more trying to show the possible numbers required at a reasonable price point that people would actually be prepared to pay.

It wouldn’t just be paid for via subscriptions remember, as we’d also have advertisers paying to market to a fairly large captive audience.

I think the biggest stumbling block would be obtaining the away games rights, as the ‘smaller’ clubs would just band together and charge a huge fee to replace what they are losing from a collective bargaining position. That’s why a PL channel of some sorts could be the answer.

Again though - it isn't a large captive audience. You are talking about 500'000. Big tv shows which pull in the tv revenue are getting 5-10 million viewers. You are talking about 500'000 or roughly the same as Jeremy Kyle pulls in. 

The fact is - to go to the theater these days costs you £120+ a ticket (booking fees included)

To watch a live game of football costing £18... it actually doesn't sound all that ridiculous. I honestly believe in any sort of model was surely going to work the only way is a fairly high price point. Which is why - it probably doesn't work.

[CraigDS]

Again though - it isn't a large captive audience. You are talking about 500'000. Big tv shows which pull in the tv revenue are getting 5-10 million viewers. You are talking about 500'000 or roughly the same as Jeremy Kyle pulls in. 

They are all of a fairly tight demographic though. Gold for advertisers. A big TV show will have a wide demographic.

People will also record / fast forward TV shows, so not captive. You don’t have that luxury with live football, hence is a captive audience.

The fact is - to go to the theater these days costs you £120+ a ticket (booking fees included)

To watch a live game of football costing £18... it actually doesn't sound all that ridiculous. I honestly believe in any sort of model was surely going to work the only way is a fairly high price point. Which is why - it probably doesn't work.

You’re comparing to events (boxing) or nights out (theatre) which people do infrequently. Certainly not monthly (not a huge number of people anyway). People are normally willing to pay higher prices for an infrequent event.

[rich87]

They are all of a fairly tight demographic though. Gold for advertisers. A big TV show will have a wide demographic.

People will also record / fast forward TV shows, so not captive. You don’t have that luxury with live football, hence is a captive audience.


You’re comparing to events (boxing) or nights out (theatre) which people do infrequently. Certainly not monthly (not a huge number of people anyway). People are normally willing to pay higher prices for an infrequent event.

Like I say for it to work - it has to be priced at a fee where the clubs will be able to get there money back and some extra. I honestly don't believe £15-20 is anywhere near enough of a draw for a club like Liverpool to run it in house. And even then you wont get the number of subscribers you would actually need.

Its pie in the sky stuff if you think the club would charge such a small amount to watch there games.

This is the most watched sport in the country, people need there fix of football, I think many would think £18 per game as cheap.

[CraigDS]

People think £40 tickets are expensive, so they aren’t going to agree £18 a game on TV is cheap at all. I think if you did a poll on here it would be overwhelmingly negative to that figure. Despite us being on BT a lot this season our fans haven’t taken this up in droves for around that figure PER MONTH, let alone per game.

Also, I’m certainly not suggesting that clubs would charge that amount, I’m simply doing the maths to give some idea of the numbers of subscribers that would be required at those price points which many would probably consider as reasonable and something they’d pay.

[SteveZissou]

Hasn't improved our net spend. Better safety for the owners.

[CraigDS]

Hasn't improved our net spend. Better safety for the owners.

Net spent is a massive red herring used by people who don’t have much of a clue what it really means in a financial sense. Has vastly increased our wage spend.

No idea what the last sentence even means.

Nothing to do with TV so take your owner whingbaggery elsewhere.

[campioni]

Like I say for it to work - it has to be priced at a fee where the clubs will be able to get there money back and some extra. I honestly don't believe £15-20 is anywhere near enough of a draw for a club like Liverpool to run it in house. And even then you wont get the number of subscribers you would actually need.

Its pie in the sky stuff if you think the club would charge such a small amount to watch there games.

This is the most watched sport in the country, people need there fix of football, I think many would think £18 per game as cheap.

You're talking about £75 a month just for Liverpool matches. Does that mean that unless you subscribe to LFCtv you can't watch any Liverpool matches ie nothing on a shared sports channel such as sky/bt? So the only time I get to see other teams playing is if they're playing Liverpool or if I subscribe to their channel as well? I don't think that's a great model, I like watching other league games, particularly those that affect us.

[rob1966]

No one pays £75 a month just for Sky Sports to just watch a handful of one teams games. They get countless other channels, content and services (pause, record, etc).

You're going about the maths wrong. Clubs will want to increase what they are earning above what they do now. You need to seperate the domestic income per season from our share of the foreign market (assuming this is still sold collectively - although that's where the big money is selling it ourselves) and then divide this by the approx number of potential U.K. subscribers to a channel showing purely our content.

That will give you more of an idea of what you'd need to charge. Roughly, of course as the likes of Sky, etc will take a cut to allow us to distribute it via their platforms.

Exactly. We have Virgin XL with a Tivo box (I get Sky Go using my stepdads Sky subscription). Our Virgin is mainly for the normal TV and kids telly - the BT was something we didn't even consider. I only wanted BT for MotoGP anyway, I hardly watch footy these days, our games and the odd other match. My 7 yr old is really getting into footy now, so he'll watch whatever is on, but the channels that get watched the most are Discovery Turbo and Cartoon Network.

I stopped going the match as I couldn't justify the £70 a game it was costing me, no fucking way would I pay £75 a month to watch our games. Fucking hell, I walked out of a pub at half time when on holiday when we were away to Swansea as I was bored off my tree, I'm not paying that kind of money to watch 11 men behind the ball every time we play.