Priced out of football

Nani Nana

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Does anyone else feel increasingly priced out of Premier League football?

In France where I am based it costs 45€ a month to get cable TV showing the games (upward trend). In the UK I think it is nearing 70€ a month.

Champions League tickets at a club like Aston Villa cost up to 97£. I read that 17 out of 20 Premier League clubs increased cheapest season ticket prices this season.

How long until people stop paying and use pirate networks? I am happy to pay my subscription but another hike will make me think.
 
Nani Nana said:
Does anyone else feel increasingly priced out of Premier League football?

In France where I am based it costs 45€ a month to get cable TV showing the games (upward trend). In the UK I think it is nearing 70€ a month.

Champions League tickets at a club like Aston Villa cost up to 97£. I read that 17 out of 20 Premier League clubs increased cheapest season ticket prices this season.

How long until people stop paying and use pirate networks? I am happy to pay my subscription but another hike will make me think.
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Compared to the UK prices 45 Euros for all games is a bargain, you are looking upto £90 if you factor in all the subscriptions to watch all games here (and you don't even get to watch any of the 3pm games).

PL are really backward when it comes to this, they have enough money to create their own streaming service and they could offer it at a much lower price and probably make the same amount of money. And a lot of people are turning to other ways of watching due to the costs which only results in them losing more money.

This is also having a negative effect on attracting newer younger fans, if you speak to the younger generation they are doing/watching more affordable things.
 
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It's more than 70 Euros in the UK, I believe. Without offers, Sky's base package plus Sports is £40, and to add TNT to that is £31. Amazon Prime get a few games too, that's about £10 I think. So approx £80 per month all in (roughly 95 euros), or £960 per year (1150 euros), and you still only get about 50% of Premier League games with that.

I'd gladly pay that if it gave you every game both live and on demand (though I know that's because of the 3pm blackout and the complexities of that are a different discussion altogether). But I can't justify it for half a product.

I don't care for the model that broadcasting has to be split between broadcasters. They justify it by saying it gives consumers a choice, but it doesn't. Fans want to watch every game their team plays. The choice they have is which one can they afford, and which one can they manage without, it's not a good choice to have. It's just more money for broadcasting rights. It's no wonder people stream illegally.
 
I've never paid it, I've always found it incredibly extortionate to pay for Sky/BT to be at the whim of those providers actually showing your team that week when in other countries every PL match is being shown.

Although admittedly there is an aspect of old world FA bureaucracy that also doesn't help, it's a bit of a joke and forces people into finding alternative methods to watch their teams matches. That leads to the obvious question of why am I bothering paying so much anyway, I'll just use alternative methods all the time.

On top of that I wouldn't even say those channels provide any value for money outside of the 2 hours a week for the match. I always point to our subscription to Disney Plus for £10-£12 per month as an example of something that my little one spends hours watching/having on in the background. I get it's slightly different in that they're showing already made products rather than live productions but the point is that you feel like you're 100% getting your moneys worth.

My arguments are nothing groundbreaking, I'm sure they've been repeated before but I'm fairly confident it's still a sentiment held by many.
 
Yeah it's a disgrace how expensive it is to watch on tele in the UK. The market for a PL streaming service, where you can watch every game if you so wished, is definitely there for an affordable rate but cannot see that coming to pass, certainly not in the near future.
 
Nani Nana said:
Does anyone else feel increasingly priced out of Premier League football?

In France where I am based it costs 45€ a month to get cable TV showing the games (upward trend). In the UK I think it is nearing 70€ a month.

Champions League tickets at a club like Aston Villa cost up to 97£. I read that 17 out of 20 Premier League clubs increased cheapest season ticket prices this season.

How long until people stop paying and use pirate networks? I am happy to pay my subscription but another hike will make me think.
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It's already happening, I barely know anyone that has sky subs.

In the late 90s an uncle of mine had an array of satellite dishes that let him get 60,000 channels or something stupid like that. Remember watching a Turkey v Ireland play off that wasn't available on TV here.

It's at least 20 years ago since streaming sites have been on the go, there used to be one where you could watch any game. Then there was the satellite boxes where you could get the codes to have any channel. Now it's all iptv.

I think what will end up happening is that future fans will be priced out of the game. In the end we'll be paying over the top for a poorer product, it's the way boxing has gone. Football could end up the same.
 
It costs about 60 Pounds per month in Norway, which gets you PL, domestic cups and the Europa and Conference Leagues. If you want CL, that's another 30 or so from a different provider (as part of a package that gets you lots of other things as well, but mainly things I'm not interested in). Lots of people complain that's too expensive, and in truth it's borderline viable even for someone as into it as I am.

The basic issue is pretty straightforward. Currently, broadcasting rights is done in a way designed to maximise income for the league. The only thing that limits cost is how much the buyer of rights thinks they will be able to sell it for, and to how many. Since the rights are auctioned, they will always go to someone who are more optimistic or risk-oriented in that regard than the competition. The inevitable result is exactly what we have - something that is perceived as overpriced, but which sufficiently many are still prepared to reluctantly pay. As long as the Premier League maintains its focus on maximising broadcasting revenue to the complete exclusion of all other concerns, that's how it will remain.

That approach brings a lot of money to the PL, but it should be recognised that it also has a downside. Creating a robust market for piracy is one that follows as an inevitable consequence of that model, because a price that is the optimal combination of income and appeal is necessarily one that is higher than quite a lot of people are able or willing to pay. It also obviously limits fan growth, simply because a lot of people who otherwise would watch games won't be able to.
 
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Of course. To get a ticket to watch Everton it's about £50 after you pay c. £35 a year for membership because they're always sold out before general sale. If you don't live in Liverpool then you're looking at another c. £100 on top of that for transport so for a full day or weekend to watch them it costs me around £200.

I have Now TV which is around £20 a month and think it's worth it in regards to the other packages we have but it sucks that there isn't an all in package.
 
The even more ridiculous thing i found when i had a package was that sky charged (not sure if they still do) extra to watch in 'HD' (this isn't 4k but 1080p). It's just one massive rip off.
 
Thought this would be more on ticket prices but yes.

Not going to any of our CL games out of principle as having to pay £80 + to watch a Football match is simply wrong in my book.
 
It isn’t just the visible cost either.

These companies expect me to spend the bones of €100 a month to watch half the games, but they also want me to sit through 8-10 three minute ad breaks during a programme for the pleasure of doing so.

Even if I value my time at minimum wage, how much does that add to the total cost across a year?

The competition argument only works if all the companies with rights could show all the games. When the companies divvy the games up between themselves there is zero competitive benefit to the customer, only increased cost.
 
I've always felt like it was too expensive to have. Especially given the amounts of money that are involved in the sport, it's totally unjustifiable to me. But, clearly people are willing to pay that amount - it's why it keeps increasing.

I've barely watched live games in years, though the fact we've been shit has helped significantly with that.
 
How much is the season ticket for United these days? I always thought that if I lived in Manchester I'd pay whatever the price and never complain and also travelling for Old Trafford I never really felt that I overpay (other than years where I had to buy the membership just for one game in a season), I think the cheapest ticket I got last years was 50 pounds.

But yeah, it's surely expensive if you want to see many games and the TV prices in the UK are absurd, I pay like 15e for Viaplay's unlimited Premier League coverage, can't imagine paying four-five times that!

Moving to Barcelona I was also quite surprised that the tickets for Barca are much easier to get than for United, you don't need to buy the membership for a single ticket and they're considerably cheaper, apart from the biggest game you get decent seats for 60-80eur and often there are resident discounts -30%, it's even cheaper with the season pass obviously. Still not cheap, especially as the salaries aren't that great here and for many people that's big money, but overall accessible and definitely worth the price if you're a fan.
 
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