It shouldn't be this complicated to watch the Premier League
AWAY GOALS RULE: Ireland & the UK need to get with the times and resolve their glaring broadcasting issues
Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?
Following the Premier League in the UK, the country where it is based, is not straightforward.
One major reason for this is the blackout rule, which prohibits the broadcasting of live football from 2.45 to 5.15 on a Saturday, meaning none of those games air anywhere in England, of which there is usually a handful.
This becomes even more absurd when some of those 3pm kick-off games get moved to Sunday’s 2pm slot — usually due to European competition commitments — and they remain untelevised.
Another, less spoken about reason why following the Premier League in England is so difficult is that, when it is allowed to be on TV, it is on one of Sky Sports, TNT Sports (formerly BT Sports) or, rarely, Amazon Prime.
All three require some sort of (expensive) subscription to access.
Never at any point will Sky compete with TNT or Amazon for viewers’ time, as they each get their own exclusive rights packages.
Some may choose to only pay for one broadcaster, so in that sense they are competing.
However, people end up needing all three to have the only chance at watching the most popular league in the world in the country in which it’s based, so that competition isn’t actually real in any sense.
Grace Robertson explained why the broadcasters aren’t really competing with each other in her pre-season preview looking at the breakdown of the TV rights over in England ahead of the auctioning of the next big contracts later this year.
“I don’t think regulators have quite understood the dynamic at play,” she wrote.1
“Ofcom, Britain’s broadcasting regulator, has maintained a “no single buyer” rule, following the European Commission’s path.
“I think the regulators believe they’re creating competition in the market here, allowing consumers to choose between paying for Sky, [TNT Sports] or Amazon.
“In reality, the same people are paying for all three, and the product was cheaper for the fans when Sky had a monopoly.”
Those contracts could see a big shake-up when they are negotiated, with it even being reported that new time slots may be made available as part of a new five-package structure.2
There are currently time slots for Friday (evening kick-off), Saturday (1230 & 1730 kick-off), Sunday (1400 & 1630 kick-off) and Monday (evening kick-off), as well as a couple of midweek rounds of fixtures (staggered evening kick-offs).
But the new proposal suggests adding two more time slots to Sunday, as well as making more game-weeks available for Friday and Monday night football (as those slots aren’t used every week, unlike the Saturday and Sunday ones).
However, there is still no suggestion that Premier League football will be allowed to televise those pesky Saturday 3pm games (although, WSL games may be allowed to be broadcast in that slot, if everything goes according to plan), meaning not all 380 games will be available to watch on TV in the UK.
This new structure could blow up the existing framework that current fans have come to live with over the last decade when BT Sport first entered the world of Premier League broadcasting.
It is designed to attract big names in the streaming market, including Netflix, Apple and Disney.
It remains to be seen whether any of those will enter the market (or even if TNT or Amazon will stick around).
But their addition would only further worsen the situation for supporters.
Needing three different subscriptions to keep up with the biggest sports league in the world on a weekly basis is already a lot, regardless of the current cost of living crisis, so adding one or two more into the mix would be a real blow to the consumer.
Of course, this set-up suits the Premier League as it is the situation that best helps maximise the sale of the TV rights, which funds the high-spending we see in the transfer market, so no change is likely without external pressure.
This newsletter has written about a regulator entering English football in the past, and this is another area highlighting why it is needed.3
True competition should help the consumer by driving prices down and thus making the product more accessible.
Yet this is the exact opposite of the case.
And this is ignoring the fact that getting to and from games is also a disaster for supporters due to the UK’s abysmal transport structures, so adding even more difficult kick-off times to travel for would be difficult for match-going fans to live with too.
Change is desperately needed and this latest development should be a huge wake-up call that it doesn’t need to be this complicated.
Writer’s Aside: Ireland also has Premier Sports as a broadcaster, and they only ever show one of the handful of 3pm Saturday kick-offs.
The blackout rule has no basis in Ireland (famously not in the UK, thanks for asking) and should not impact our broadcasting rights.
However, it does.
Any deal struck for the non-Saturday 3pm slots in the UK is, in effect, also struck for Ireland as we also have TNT and Sky here (and although Amazon is available in Ireland, it is not a Premier League broadcaster as Premier Sports also cover their games instead, which only highlights how needlessly complicated this process is), and there is no added issue there beyond the ones pointed out in this newsletter.
But, for some reason, the Saturday afternoon games are sold in a separate rights package exclusively in Ireland, but only one game is made available each week as part of the deal.
This is really annoying, and I wish something could be done to change this!
Source: Grace on Football (highly recommend subscribing!)
Source: The Telegraph
Source: Declan’s Newsletter