£5.1 Billion !!!

But it would be moral for him to say that Arsenal should pay their cleaning staff the living wage, Chelsea are the only PL club to do so (I'm not a Chelsea fan).

nor am I an armchair subscriber ................football - opium of the masses...............

He can't though, can he. He might think that's the case personally (I hope he does) but as PL representative, once one party starts laying down moral judgements on another it starts all sorts of mudslinging, counter-claims etc.

Think of it like if you have a knock between your car and another. You are required by the insurance company to admit nothing, even if you believe it was indeed your fault. If you say anything, you forfeit your cover.

If (Chelsea excepted) PL clubs don't pay staff the living wage and people morally object to that, then it's the duty of everyone who has ever gone through the turnstiles, or bought a scarf at the club shop, or a pie in the concession stands, or takes out a subscription to watch the club on the telly, to stand up and say so.

Clearly it seems the vast majority of people don't give a flying one.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

We are now at a point where TV pays more money into football than matchday fans do so, if the trend continues, it will soon reach a point where TV companies will insist on full stadia because they can hardly sell their product if the grounds are empty.

We can't be far off a point where TV companies will actually pay "fans" to go to matches to create the atmosphere for those watching at home.

I see the satire value in that but I don't think we're anywhere near there yet, although ticket prices do I think post an existential threat (good band, more from them later) to lower league professional clubs.

Chelsea get 20% of their revenue from ticket sales. Even if that drops to 10% or 5% would they, knowing what we do of the avarice of yer average Premier League side, willingly forego that cash? I doubt it. And the declining domestic market for attendance would, I fear, be more than covered by the extention of the overseas market, making going to a match what tourists do as part of a holiday. They see the games live, some sadsack ex Chelsea headhunter takes his badly-spelled homemade sign about Sir John Terry to his local Wetherspoon's in, ooh, let's say Woking.

The flip side though is chilling: in among the fallout from this deal are calls for ticket prices to fall. But let's say in League 2 ticket revenue represents 70-80% of your budget (I have no idea if this is accurate or not but for the purposes of debate let's say ticket revenue represents "most" of a L2 club's income). Without the tv deal trickling down more to the 72, those clubs will need to keep ticket prices at around the £20 level to remain a going concern. Yet that becomes utterly unsustainable if Janner Dad out there can get a ticket for Arsenal v Liverpool for a tenner.

The Newell's of this world are pottier than I suspect them to be if they think Argyle will ever reach the "holy land". If we don't get back in the Championship in 3 years we're pretty much guaranteed to stay where we are but radically downsize our ambitions and our scale. I can see Argyle, Oldham, Oxford etc becoming semi pro in a decade or so. Which means we won't need a stadium anyewhere near 17k but a flippin' great sports bar probably would sustain the playing budget.

Funny how things turn out, innit.

bjorn_yesterday wrote:

PatDunne wrote:

Scudamore today in the Guardian, players earning 'half a million pounds a week while other staff are not paid the living wage - doesn't make me feel uncomfortable' - well it feckin well should....................

I completely agree with your sentiment but it's not Scudamore's responsibility to pay Arsenal's cleaning staff.

Its not but im sure he has influence to insist that clubs pay staff a living wage with the increase in profits the clubs are making.

bjorn_yesterday wrote:

PatDunne wrote:

Scudamore today in the Guardian, players earning 'half a million pounds a week while other staff are not paid the living wage - doesn't make me feel uncomfortable' - well it feckin well should....................

I completely agree with your sentiment but it's not Scudamore's responsibility to pay Arsenal's cleaning staff.

Perhaps Mr Scudamore is on the same half million?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

One stat I saw earlier was that finishing bottom of the league will pay £150m in prize money. This is more than the current combined annual income of Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Athletico Madrid.

I do wish you would get summat right every now and again Franny cos you know that people believe what they read on here and repeat it to their mates down the pub who then slap them for being muppets.

Income 2013/4:-
Bayern: 487.5 million
Dortmund: 261.5 million
Athletico: 169.9 million

That runs out at about £765 million, so about 5 times the speculated £150 million for finishing bottom of the prem.

This is of course only the start, the £5.136 billion is for domestic rights, the revenue from worldwide sales has been rising exponentially, this 40%+ rise could lead to a 50 or 60%, or even more, rise in worldwide rights bringing in possibly another £4 billion.

Last year Prem revenues hit £3 billion for the first time, in 2016 that will be be the tv revenues alone, that does of course obscure the reality of the situation, this is all being driven by half a dozen clubs, does anybody actually believe people would be queueing to pay to watch Southampton against Stoke, or Hull against Burnley, the money clubs are Manure, Citeh, Chelski, Arse and Poo, below that Spurs and possibly Newcastle, the rest just don't have the profile, in a certain way I quite admire the EPL's willingness to share the cash as evenly as it does, even stumping up serious money in the form of parachute payments for those teams suffering the ignominy of relegation.

Personally I just don't get it, firstly why the big six don't object more strongly to funding the also rans, and secondly how the both BT and Sky can generate sufficient revenues to fund the price they pay, fewer and fewer pubs seem to subscribe, plenty of the ones I go into don't have the official pint glass on their screens, not to mention quite a few of them having foreign transmissions including Saturday 3 o'clock fixtures. I 4-1 watch every game I fancy but would sooner watch Argyle than pay Sky, well no not really but you know what I mean.

Whether the EPL would consider shutting themselves off from promotion and relegation I doubt, last seasons losers, Norwich, Cardiff and Fulham didn't bring much to the Prem table and only Norwich in 7th look capable of of bouncing back despite the parachute money, while of their predecessors only QPR sneaked back in with Reading and Wigan looking to be out of the fight, knocked out really for Wigan.

I think the Prem needs the drama of the relegation fight or the fans will rapidly lose interest, plus there is always the chance of one or two of the big clubs making their way back up, Derby, Forest, Wolves, Leeds and Wednesday are far bigger clubs than Hull, Burnley, Swansea, Stoke, Leicester, West Brom or Palace, that of course takes no account of possibly Watford, Bournemouth or even Brentford sneaking under the wire.

Shirley after 20+ years of Sky they must be approaching market saturation yet here we have their price jumping by over 50% for admittedly a slightly larger package, ooh er missus. I guess that the advertisers are happy enough that Sky is the primary platform and that those watching on the multitude of streams get the ads anyway, it would not be in Sky's interests to shut down the monkey transmissions of their air because people would simply shift to other supply platforms which obviously carry different advertising.

Bottom line, the value of something is what someone will pay for it, this is a done deal, no one will be killed by it so it doesn't really tick the immorality box despite the fact that some of the whiners want to bleat on.

Personally i dont have a problem with the five billion paid to the premiership, Sky BT they are private companies its not the Tax payers dosh and the money goes into football the game we all love. i agree a lot of greedy bastards get rich but thats life unfortunatley, the premiership is the most exciting league in the world so good luck to them!!!! ps i'm just grateful to have a club to support, stripes are back... bla bla bla. Trust in Green Jim.

Do people around the globe really watch Stoke vs Burnley or QPR vs Villa ??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/31427562

Its going to happen sooner or later

Accrington Stanley ‏@ASFCofficial 12h12 hours ago
The Prem Lge has a new £5bn TV deal. £10m per match. 1 game would pay our annual wage bill for the next 20 years

crazy

I've read elsewhere that the highest verified viewing figures for a sky game is around 4million. Now I guess that in the scheme of things so long as as many households as possible have the sports package the actual number watching the latest match is fairly irrelevant to the company. It's all about maximizing subscriptions.

I don't know how the advertising revenue stacks up here, whether it is based on subscribers or viewers. The football demographic must be fairly lucrative though, predominantly young, male and with cash in the pocket, probably enabling sky to call the shots again.

The biggest issue to clubs like ours is if pressure is brought to bear by supporter groups and the football ombudsman (and yes, this really exists) to reduce top flight ticket prices in order to entice a younger, more vibrant demographic to bring colour, life and noise to backdrop sky matches. If it becomes cheaper to attend at the top, it'll have to become cheaper for us to attend. With gate receipts an integral portion of our revenue, part-time players or feeder club status could become a horrible reality.

Part of me can live with the rapacious behaviour of clubs that rarely, if ever, get relegated from the top. It's that raft of clubs that have spent recent years in the third division and have a tenuous top flight pedigree displaying those traits that get me agitated. However when it comes down to it, and maybe the premier league was always inevitable, it's those clubs who had their arses tickled for a few pieces of silver back in 1992 who piss me off the most.

I heard today about a campaign to price all Prem tickets at £20, if this is brought in we could find ourselves in the bizarre situation where it costs more to watch Argyle play Accy Stan than it does to watch Man U play Liverpool or as Greenlander says, the lower league teams will be obliged to drop their ticket prices thus losing out on much needed gate receipts, the lifeblood of every club in the football league where TV money and lucrative sponsorship deals are like rocking horse shit. What's the answer, does enough of the massive money being paid to the top 20 trickle down to the bottom 72 through transfer fees? I suppose it does occasionally like with the Grimes to Swansea deal but it feels to me as though most of it disappears through extortionate wages, agents fees and the recruitment of overseas players.

zyph wrote:

Don't give Sky your money.....I never have and never will.

I do. My mate Rupes gets £16.50/month out of me.

sufferedsince 68 wrote:

Personally i dont have a problem with the five billion paid to the premiership, Sky BT they are private companies its not the Tax payers dosh and the money goes into football the game we all love. i agree a lot of greedy bastards get rich but thats life unfortunatley, the premiership is the most exciting league in the world so good luck to them!!!! ps i'm just grateful to have a club to support, stripes are back... bla bla bla. Trust in Green Jim.

It doesn't stop there.

Both Sky and BT will need to recoup that money in some way or another. Will they sell more subscriptions? Possibly but anybody who wants to subscribe probably already is so there can't be much room to grow there.

They could cross-subsidise the Sport channels by increasing the cost of the others. They probably will.

They could increase the charges of their other services: mobile phones, broadband etc. They probably will.

They could make subscription more expensive. Or make the key matches pay per view. They probably will.

They could charge advertisers more. They probably will.

The effect of maximising many of these revenue streams will be felt well away from those who subscribe to the football. In effect if you use any BT or Sky service then you will be subsidising the football deal but worse than that even if you don't then any product you buy advertised on either platform will include something in it's pricing to represent that advertising and marketing and that proportion will rise (I believe that laundry products are very susceptible to this with much of their pricing representing marketing of the product rather than the cost of producing the actual products themselves - hence "soaps") creating an inflationary effect on the wider economy that nobody can escape.

Unless, of course, this is just a game to see who can ride the losses the longest before somebody bankrupts and the winner is left with monopolistic control of all of the advertising and subscription revenue. So far Sky has seen off Setanta, Eurosport and ITV digital in one way or another and it won't be considering losing out to BT.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

sufferedsince 68 wrote:

Personally i dont have a problem with the five billion paid to the premiership, Sky BT they are private companies its not the Tax payers dosh and the money goes into football the game we all love. i agree a lot of greedy bastards get rich but thats life unfortunatley, the premiership is the most exciting league in the world so good luck to them!!!! ps i'm just grateful to have a club to support, stripes are back... bla bla bla. Trust in Green Jim.

It doesn't stop there.

Both Sky and BT will need to recoup that money in some way or another. Will they sell more subscriptions? Possibly but anybody who wants to subscribe probably already is so there can't be much room to grow there.

They could cross-subsidise the Sport channels by increasing the cost of the others. They probably will.

They could increase the charges of their other services: mobile phones, broadband etc. They probably will.

They could make subscription more expensive. Or make the key matches pay per view. They probably will.

They could charge advertisers more. They probably will.

The effect of maximising many of these revenue streams will be felt well away from those who subscribe to the football. In effect if you use any BT or Sky service then you will be subsidising the football deal but worse than that even if you don't then any product you buy advertised on either platform will include something in it's pricing to represent that advertising and marketing and that proportion will rise (I believe that laundry products are very susceptible to this with much of their pricing representing marketing of the product rather than the cost of producing the actual products themselves - hence "soaps") creating an inflationary effect on the wider economy that nobody can escape.

Unless, of course, this is just a game to see who can ride the losses the longest before somebody bankrupts and the winner is left with monopolistic control of all of the advertising and subscription revenue. So far Sky has seen off Setanta, Eurosport and ITV digital in one way or another and it won't be considering losing out to BT.

Eurosport is still around.

Yes but it doesn't compete to cover English football.

Consumers in emerging economieswill fund this deal

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Yes but it doesn't compete to cover English football.

and it never did

... and so "in one way or another" it has been "seen off".

In fact it has been seen off so effectively it hasn't even tried.

Why do you think that might be?

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/feb/11/premier-league-richard-scudamore-sky-tv-deal

Gareth Nicholson wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

We are now at a point where TV pays more money into football than matchday fans do so, if the trend continues, it will soon reach a point where TV companies will insist on full stadia because they can hardly sell their product if the grounds are empty.

We can't be far off a point where TV companies will actually pay "fans" to go to matches to create the atmosphere for those watching at home.

I see the satire value in that but I don't think we're anywhere near there yet, although ticket prices do I think post an existential threat (good band, more from them later) to lower league professional clubs.

Chelsea get 20% of their revenue from ticket sales. Even if that drops to 10% or 5% would they, knowing what we do of the avarice of yer average Premier League side, willingly forego that cash? I doubt it. And the declining domestic market for attendance would, I fear, be more than covered by the extention of the overseas market, making going to a match what tourists do as part of a holiday. They see the games live, some sadsack ex Chelsea headhunter takes his badly-spelled homemade sign about Sir John Terry to his local Wetherspoon's in, ooh, let's say Woking.

The flip side though is chilling: in among the fallout from this deal are calls for ticket prices to fall. But let's say in League 2 ticket revenue represents 70-80% of your budget (I have no idea if this is accurate or not but for the purposes of debate let's say ticket revenue represents "most" of a L2 club's income). Without the tv deal trickling down more to the 72, those clubs will need to keep ticket prices at around the £20 level to remain a going concern. Yet that becomes utterly unsustainable if Janner Dad out there can get a ticket for Arsenal v Liverpool for a tenner.

The Newell's of this world are pottier than I suspect them to be if they think Argyle will ever reach the "holy land". If we don't get back in the Championship in 3 years we're pretty much guaranteed to stay where we are but radically downsize our ambitions and our scale. I can see Argyle, Oldham, Oxford etc becoming semi pro in a decade or so. Which means we won't need a stadium anyewhere near 17k but a flippin' great sports bar probably would sustain the playing budget.

Funny how things turn out, innit.

All it takes is one very wealthy man to realise that PAFC is the last city club never to have realised its full potential and it can happen. Just like several other clubs in the last decade and it looks like little old Bournemouth could be joining them.
It can rarely be done any other way these days.

tigertony wrote:

Do people around the globe really watch Stoke vs Burnley or QPR vs Villa ??

Yes they do, here in South Africa we get every live game that is shown in the UK be it Sky, BT or terrestrial. Then we get all the content of the Premier League's own channel, that's where Andy Townsend is now :-( , which shows at least 4 live Saturday 3pm matches. Then any matches not shown live can be watched in their entirety within the next couple of days. Plus all the Capital Cup, FA Cup and European matches, several Championship games every season + all the Spanish, German and Italian live schedule. Unfortunately they seem to decline anything lower than the Championship and, amazingly, the Johnstones Paint Trophy hasn't featured either.

You appear to get more live matches than we do, and probably at a fraction of the cost!

Les Miserable wrote:

You appear to get more live matches than we do, and probably at a fraction of the cost!

It's the same out here. 'All' PL matches are available live in the pubs, one way or another. Most hosted by Andy Gray & Richard Keys, now being paid handsomely to be sexist