THE Premier League’s latest television deal may make clubs richer than ever before, but don’t be fooled into thinking that it will result in ticket prices being reduced.
Between them, Sky and BT have agreed to pay a massive £5.136bn for the right to screen live Premier League games from 2016 to 2019.
It’s an incredible amount of money, just over £10m per game, and it’s a deal that has come in for some criticism.
I don’t see why. The Premier League has a product that Sky and BT want to buy. That’s business. Both clearly feel they can recoup the money in subscriptions and advertising, so what is the problem?
Once the deal was announced, people immediately began speculating that it might result in ticket prices becoming more affordable.
Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore made all the right noises when the deal was announced, telling the press that stadiums must remain full and young people given the opportunity to go to games.
However, if you’re expecting Premier League ticket prices to take a sudden nosedive, prepare to be disappointed.
As much as they like to try and tell us otherwise, football clubs are businesses, so ticket prices are all about supply and demand.
As long as stadiums continue to sell out, ticket prices will rise rather than fall.
Attendances at Premier League games are actually quite impressive this season. At 12 of the 20 clubs, average attendances are at 95 per cent of stadium capacity or more, with only three operating at less than 90 per cent of capacity.
Half of the clubs have average attendances less than 1,000 below capacity, with 14 having less than 2,000 empty seats on average. Just two clubs, Aston Villa and Sunderland, have a gap of more than 3,000 between their average attendance and stadium capacity.
At most of the top clubs there is a long waiting list for a season ticket, while matchday tickets generally go to members, who pay an annual fee for the right to have first refusal.
From a financial standpoint, most clubs would be mad to reduce ticket prices. They would literally be throwing money away. Unless supporters vote with their feet and start watching more games from the comfort of their living rooms, there will be no stop to the rise of ticket prices.
STICKING with television rights, last week’s column about the R&A’s decision to award live coverage of The Open to Sky provoked a bit of a reaction on social media.
Basingstoke professional Stuart Archibald’s view can be seen by clicking here, while Mike Harris, the editor of Golf Monthly, who lives in north Hampshire, has also had his say.
In terms of the quality of the coverage, I’m happy to accept that both may be right. Sky may well provide a better product than the BBC.
Harris also makes a decent point about Sky’s NOWTV platform, which allows people like me, who don’t want to splash out for Sky, to make one-off payments to watch specific events. It’s something I may well start doing to watch the final round of golf’s majors.
However, it’s not people like me that I am worried about. I’m already an enthusiastic, if appalling, golfer.
When Justin Rose won the US Open, I wrote a column explaining how his exploits at Birkdale had first whetted my appetite for golf back in 1998. That would not have happened if I had not been able to watch Rose in action.
Plenty of people forced to play with and indeed in the group behind me will tell you that would have not been a big loss to the sport, but I’m probably worth around £500 a year to clubs in this area in terms of green fees and driving range tokens.
That’s not to be sniffed at – and while I’m willing to accept that the coverage may be better on Sky, I cannot see how having fewer people able to watch and get enthused by the sport is a good thing.
I do whole-heartedly agree with the final point made by Archibald, who suggests that golf’s absence from school PE sessions is a problem for the sport. The R&A should certainly consider using the extra money they have got from Sky to bus schoolchildren out to clubs for free lessons.
Have your say on either of these issues by using the comment box at the bottom of the page, or Tweet me @JBoymanGazette.
Articles linked to this story
Archibald: R&A were right to award Open coverage to Sky
Open TV rights – Why the R&A did the right thing (from golf-monthly.co.uk)
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