Football bubble about to pop?

Strumms

The premier league may very well kill the golden goose...as tv coverage is concerned..

Sky is great, love loads of other sports so I’ve no issues paying... I used to pay for setanta too, when I ended up having Saturday off work it was great on cold ****ty winter days, a 3pm premier league kickoff, summer not so much on ... but hey... the premier league are entitled to maximize their revenue stream but they are fûcking over the football public with the current setup...it’s a pretty ****ty way to do business.

Should always have been only one broadcaster for EPL..regardless of the match day / kickoff time. That was a really ****ty thing for the EPL to do in hindsight...greedy, should have been a one stop shop group of channels / subscriptions...

Rights sold separately for cups both FA and League Cup, no problem, different competitions, they sell separately.... but all EPL should be the one TV provider / company in my view.

osarusan

I think splitting the broadcasting rights into different packages for different broadcasters was a result of EU policy on monopolies...or something like that.

Johnny BGood

a very cool kid wrote: »

United, in particular being poor/boring is terrible news for the PL. There was a stat a few years ago that 51% of PL viewers watched a match involving United. They are box office, the other smaller teams are really just supporting cast in some ways.



This my friend I'm afraid is nonsense, I try to go to a couple of LOI games a year. The standard is dreadfully poor, you don't feel welcome and everything about it just screams amateur. The fact even the style of play has gone so negative as well - you'd struggle to keep an eye on it on tv.

Surely the “standard is dreadfully poor” excuse has been put to bed over the past decade.
St Pats under L. Buckley, Dundalk under S.Kenny and Rovers under Bradley (several more)have played a very attractive brand of football which would be far superior to what you’d see in an average game in England.
Why did you not feel welcome? Was it the bad language or the sh** curry chips?
These are problems at every game around Europe.
Just another excuse and a reason to put the league down for no apparent reason.
Yes facilities could improve but in terms of the people involved(who are great) and the standard of games, it’s as good in terms of playing football “the right way” as I’ve ever seen.
I always feel the need to compare ourselves to Scotland, who’s club fans support them regardless of how sh** they may be or how much they a frowned upon by English fans.
Ireland unfortunately has this culture of going elsewhere and paying a fortune to get some satisfaction when they could just go down the road.
Weird.

NIMAN

A lot of Irish football fans are event junkies. Not quite the same excitement for them to go to an LoI game.
They like supporting a winning team too, hence many also become rugby fans when Ireland or the provinces are doing well.

Ireland must be the only country where so-called football fanatics don't support their local team?

Many leagues around Europe/the World are likely at the standard of the LoI or worse, but fans still support their teams.
Instead in Ireland we get "I wouldn't watch that sh1t" as a retort.

snotboogie

a very cool kid wrote: »

This my friend I'm afraid is nonsense, I try to go to a couple of LOI games a year. The standard is dreadfully poor, you don't feel welcome and everything about it just screams amateur. The fact even the style of play has gone so negative as well - you'd struggle to keep an eye on it on tv.

The quality of football has largely improved across the leavue. To be fair my local team Cork City have been playing brutal stuff for the last few years but the match experience itself is actually decent, I'm far from a hardcore LOI fan and I've never once felt anywhere close to unwelcome.

Polar101

At the moment player wages aren't sustainable - some of the biggest clubs can pay them, if they get tax breaks like in Spain, big TV money and sell loads of shirts. But how many other clubs can?

It's starting to look like revenues for TV rights have reached their maximum, so something will have to change. It might lead to some kind of a super league, where the richest clubs can still compete, and domestic leagues will be for the teams who weren't big enough.

One solution might be a US style wage cap for players, but who's going to implement that? If, say, the Premier League does it, best players will flock to other leagues. If UEFA implements it (don't see that happening), the best players will go to the Middle East or China. Something like that might be the only long-term solution, but I'd expect things to get financially worse for many clubs and leagues, before they get better.

You can already see "new" stuff happening, they tried the "box office" thing this season in the premier league, where people who already pay a subscription couldn't view the "special" games without paying extra. That didn't work, but anything to fleece sports fans for more money will be attempted.

Pawwed Rig

a very cool kid wrote: »

This my friend I'm afraid is nonsense, I try to go to a couple of LOI games a year. The standard is dreadfully poor, you don't feel welcome and everything about it just screams amateur. The fact even the style of play has gone so negative as well - you'd struggle to keep an eye on it on tv.

The standard is actually fairly good which is reflected by Dundalk getting to the Europa League group stages. Some of the best games I have seen in the last few years have been LOI games. It is more than that though. It is the opportunity to see football regularly rather than the annual pilgrimage to Anfield or Old Trafford. Also it is supporting Irish football rather than ploughing money into an already over inflated EPL.

As to feeling welcome? I am not sure what you are looking for there. You buy your ticket, sit down and watch the football. No more or less 'welcoming' than the time I visited the Camp Neu or the Allianz Arena

dan1895

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

The standard is actually fairly good which is reflected by Dundalk getting to the Europa League group stages. Some of the best games I have seen in the last few years have been LOI games. It is more than that though. It is the opportunity to see football regularly rather than the annual pilgrimage to Anfield or Old Trafford. Also it is supporting Irish football rather than ploughing money into an already over inflated EPL.

As to feeling welcome? I am not sure what you are looking for there. You buy your ticket, sit down and watch the football. No more or less 'welcoming' than the time I visited the Camp Neu or the Allianz Arena

You mean you don't go around LOI grounds hassling people you've never seen there before??

Pawwed Rig

dan1895 wrote: »

You mean you don't go around LOI grounds hassling people you've never seen there before??

:pac:

screamer

I certainly hope it does pop. I find football utterly boring, posers more than players these days. Overpaid legs about sums it up. In the grand scheme of things, football is not important and certainly not worth the ridiculous sums of money paid out. It’ll die out eventually as new generations find other sports and pursuits more interesting, till then it’ll have to be endured.

Fr Tod Umptious

Deleted User wrote: »

TV ratings keep falling, broadcast rights kept rising. For a while. It makes sense in a perverse way, live TV audiences keep getting smaller but sport is one of the few ways to reliably have an audience to sell fast food and viagra to.
New players would be smart to wait for prices to fall.
As well as that, the plethora of streaming options will take a while to shake out. People are paying for a few streaming options but content keeps fragmenting. However right now if Amazon have whatever, 50 million Prime subscribers then how many more will adding the Premier League get them? Considering the current prices for rights I think they'd need to charge more than a tenner a month.

But they don't keep rising.
The domestic rights were £500m down last time on the previous deal and expected to be the same for the next deal.

The EPLs deal with their Chinese rights holder collapsed in September and they had to do a new one with another provider for less money.

Fr Tod Umptious

dublin49 wrote: »

The next generation are alot more savvy than we were about paying for sport and the fragmentation of coverage to lots of providers suggest to me the days of Super pay days from the likes of Sky /BT are numbered.I think fans will move to taking coverage from the teams TV Station or paying for one off matches rather than a SKY /BT package.I think the money from tv will dramatically reduce and the premiership wont be as populated from all parts of the world as the reach of the British clubs will be reduced by the reduction in the tv money.

That can only happen if the EPL completely rewrites it's reason for being.

It was setup as 22 (now 20) clubs to bargain collectively for their interest without having to worry about the interest of the other 72 clubs in the football league.

So everyone in the Premier league gets a slice of the TV pie.

If you all teams to broadcast their own games then all that is gone.

The revenue that a top team could generate would vastly outstrip what a team further down the table could generate.

WesternZulu

doublejobbing 2 wrote: »

The interest of the Irish public in the Premiership certainly has dipped in recent years.

A combination of:

- the generally poor forum of Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal in the last decade

- a lot more people realising supporting your local LOI team on a Friday night is a lot more craic than spending your Saturday afternoon on the couch watching "us" in a goaless draw against Burnley. Or even worse the absolute anti climax so many of the big derbies turn out to be

- pubs, when open, are generally deserted for these matches, a combination of a lack of interest and people watching them on streams. A decade ago United vs Liverpool would get as many people in the door as a big Ireland qualifier, sometimes more.

- while some would debate whether it was ever fashionable, grown men do not wear premier league jerseys walking round the streets like they did 10 years ago.

I wish what you were saying is true. The reasons pubs aren't full when matches are on is down to "dodgy boxes" and far more reliable streams than ten years ago.

Even if you did want to go the legal route you can buy a one off game from Now TV for €10 and have a few beers at home watching it. Still works out cheaper than going to the pub.

As for jerseys, I think fashion trends have just changed in the last decade as it's not as accepted as it was. I might not see as many United or Liverpool jerseys about on the street as I once did but I'm not seeing any more LOI ones either.

grassylawn

AllGunsBlazing wrote: »

I remember back in the early 00's when ITV paid massively over the odds for the rights to broadcast English second tier football.


So utterly piss poor were the viewing figures that it would have been more cost effective to bus every single fan of each club to the ground on match days.

Eventually the English Premier League will devour all of football the world over.

Why do you think that?
A lot of Spanish-speaking football fans in the world. Lower taxes on wages in Spain. And it's just a nicer place to live. You don't get many Spanish pensioners retiring to Bournemouth.

Fr Tod Umptious

Deleted User wrote: »

TV ratings keep falling, broadcast rights kept rising. For a while. It makes sense in a perverse way, live TV audiences keep getting smaller but sport is one of the few ways to reliably have an audience to sell fast food and viagra to.
New players would be smart to wait for prices to fall.
As well as that, the plethora of streaming options will take a while to shake out. People are paying for a few streaming options but content keeps fragmenting. However right now if Amazon have whatever, 50 million Prime subscribers then how many more will adding the Premier League get them? Considering the current prices for rights I think they'd need to charge more than a tenner a month.

But Amazon, or any other non traditional media company, are never going to buy up anything more than the smallest of rights packages.

They are not going to stump up billions for the domestic rights that Sky and BT currently bid for.

It's just not in their business model.

snotboogie

grassylawn wrote: »

Why do you think that?
A lot of Spanish-speaking football fans in the world. Lower taxes on wages in Spain. And it's just a nicer place to live. You don't get many Spanish pensioners retiring to Bournemouth.

Problem is that none of them are in particularly wealthy countries: https://www.sbibarcelona.com/newsdetails/index/413 The China Premier League deal alone is worth more than the entire overseas portfolio for La Liga. Also nicer place to live depends where in Spain and where in England, most big players would choose London as a city over even Madrid or Barcelona. Granted Malaga might be more appealing than Sheffield but there are plenty of undesirable places in Spain for multimillionaire footballers too.

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

[/b]

But Amazon, or any other non traditional media company, are never going to buy up anything more than the smallest of rights packages.

They are not going to stump up billions for the domestic rights that Sky and BT currently bid for.

It's just not in their business model.

Tencent have the full rights in China, so big tech getting involved is not out of the question.

bocaman

Covid 19 is a temporary setback for football. I'll agree the transfer fees and wages are highly inflated. But I've been listening to the argument for years that the bubble has to burst. It hasn't. If anything it's increased and will continue to do so.

joseywhales

joseywhales wrote: »

If things were still equitable, we'd probably have ajax dominating europe right now. Burnley could be english champions. West Ham would have dominated the noughties.

Athletico Madrid would have won 2 Champions Leagues in the past 5 years. Monaco would have won one as well.

Fr Tod Umptious

snotboogie wrote: »

Problem is that none of them are in particularly wealthy countries: https://www.sbibarcelona.com/newsdetails/index/413 The China Premier League deal alone is worth more than the entire overseas portfolio for La Liga. Also nicer place to live depends where in Spain and where in England, most big players would choose London as a city over even Madrid or Barcelona. Granted Malaga might be more appealing than Sheffield but there are plenty of undesirable places in Spain for multimillionaire footballers too.



Tencent have the full rights in China, so big tech getting involved is not out of the question.

Sky built a whole new TV service (subscription based satellite TV) and used Premier League broadcasts as the linchpin of that service.
The EPL broadcasts drove the subscription model.

BT picked up a remnants of Setanta, a small company that tried to match Sky but got burned in the late 2000s financial crash.

BT then tried to compete with Sky (they had the money Setanta did not have) and this drove the price up during a few rights auction in the 2010s.

But now that BT can get subscribers signed up through the Sky they don't really need to try and compete with Sky for subscribers.

Now if you look at Amazon they already have a huge subscriber base based on selling stuff online and at an enterprise level selling cloud IT infrastructure services.

They don't necessarily need a vehicle like EPL rights to drive subscriptions the way Sky do or BT did.
They already have the subscribers.
So they are not going to go OTT in a rights bidding war.

Tencent ended up paying less for their rights than the original deal that fell through, just the same way as Amazon ended up paying less for the EPL rights they bought than the EPL had originally hoped because they remained unsold for a longer time than was expected.

grassylawn

snotboogie wrote: »

Problem is that none of them are in particularly wealthy countries: https://www.sbibarcelona.com/newsdetails/index/413 The China Premier League deal alone is worth more than the entire overseas portfolio for La Liga. Also nicer place to live depends where in Spain and where in England, most big players would choose London as a city over even Madrid or Barcelona. Granted Malaga might be more appealing than Sheffield but there are plenty of undesirable places in Spain for multimillionaire footballers too.



Tencent have the full rights in China, so big tech getting involved is not out of the question.

Your link says that the revenue of La Liga in 2016 was 3.6 billion. That is a lot. This link says the premier league had the same revenue for the same period. I didn't look into any differences in how the figures were determined but they appear comparable and both are very great.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/english-premier-league/story/3156045/premier-league-clubs-combine-for-36bn-in-revenue-in-2015-16-deloitte

cdeb

Kivaro wrote: »

Professional athletes are getting paid WAY too much.
When we talk about inequality, let's have a look at these people too.

I found this a bizarre comment to be honest.

What has Lionel Messi's wages got to do with inequality? Or what do you propose is done about it when you "have a look at these people"?

Like it or not, Messi's actions as one of the two best and most popular footballers on the planet is earning that value. Barcelona are making millions and millions off his name in terms of merchandise, profile, TV rights and, of course, the small matter of his goals and the trophies those goals earn.

The way to stop that is for people to en masse start ignoring football on TV and, if they like the game, watching their own local team. That would lead to more equality amongst football clubs. (We know this because it's what happened in the past, and there was more equality amongst football teams)

What you're proposing sounds more like a communist approach. But as I say, it'd be interesting to get a better of view of what you mean by "When we talk about inequality, let's have a look at these people too."

Sweet.Science

Kivaro wrote: »

Well, in fairness, after paying Messi €555 million over the last 4 years, is there any money left in the kitty? €1/2 billion is a bit much.
Professional athletes are getting paid WAY too much.
When we talk about inequality, let's have a look at these people too.

A lot of news outlets saying he generates much more money for Barca than he is paid . So if he's not getting the money who should ?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

cdeb wrote: »

I found this a bizarre comment to be honest.

What has Lionel Messi's wages got to do with inequality? Or what do you propose is done about it when you "have a look at these people"?

Like it or not, Messi's actions as one of the two best and most popular footballers on the planet is earning that value. Barcelona are making millions and millions off his name in terms of merchandise, profile, TV rights and, of course, the small matter of his goals and the trophies those goals earn.

The way to stop that is for people to en masse start ignoring football on TV and, if they like the game, watching their own local team. That would lead to more equality amongst football clubs. (We know this because it's what happened in the past, and there was more equality amongst football teams)

What you're proposing sounds more like a communist approach. But as I say, it'd be interesting to get a better of view of what you mean by "When we talk about inequality, let's have a look at these people too."

Supporting your local team is fine, but what if there IS no local team to support? Or not one of European quality?

The way around the Messi situation would be to introduce salary caps like in Rugby or American sports, but I'm not sure if that's doable, considering the dispariities in the indicual European economies.

Pawwed Rig

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

The way around the Messi situation would be to introduce salary caps like in Rugby or American sports, but I'm not sure if that's doable, considering the dispariities in the indicual European economies.

China would just have all the best players if salary caps were introduced in Europe.

cdeb

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Supporting your local team is fine, but what if there IS no local team to support? Or not one of European quality?

"Not one of European quality" is getting rather picky. That's a definition that's gotten far, far smaller in the past 30 years precisely because of TV money. If everyone supported a local team, there'd be far more teams of European quality. Again, we know that from when there was less TV money.

I'd say 90% of people in Ireland are within an hour of a senior club. And that's with a basket-case of a set-up here which actively discourages new clubs from joining the senior set-up.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

The way around the Messi situation would be to introduce salary caps like in Rugby or American sports, but I'm not sure if that's doable, considering the dispariities in the indicual European economies.

There is a salary cap in football, albeit at a club level, not a player level (and you can argue as to how well enforced it is for the really rich).

But if you're talking about a salary cap for individual players, then my question remains - why shouldn't Messi be paid what it's worth?

I don't think it's going to happen that people will turn off their TVs en masse btw. But let's not pretend that the root cause of inequality in football is everyone wanting to give their money to the same few teams or players. Unfortunately it's always easier to ignore this and think the problem is with other people instead.

Fr Tod Umptious

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

But they don't keep rising.
The domestic rights were £500m down last time on the previous deal and expected to be the same for the next deal.

The EPLs deal with their Chinese rights holder collapsed in September and they had to do a new one with another provider for less money.

I was speaking in broader terms than just the PL. The NFL is a good example, it's on free TV in the states and the money paid has inflated massively despite ratings not improving. But it's the rarity of an actual live audience that has caused that.

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

[/b]

But Amazon, or any other non traditional media company, are never going to buy up anything more than the smallest of rights packages.

They are not going to stump up billions for the domestic rights that Sky and BT currently bid for.

It's just not in their business model.

I wouldn't have thought so either. Sky and BT are kinda interesting in their differences, Sky have built something they need to protect while BT are trying to roll everything together. The cost to BT of providing service (telephony) to each customer is pretty low so if they can just convince 1 in 30 households in the UK to use them instead of a cheaper broadband alternative that's about half a billion a year in extra subscriptions.

But then you consider Netflix paying $275 million for a few Adam Sandler movies and suddenly ~$5 million per Premier League match doesn't seem quite so bad. :L

cdeb

Or Amazon Prime spending £160m on The Grand Tour.

Donald Trump

cdeb wrote: »

I found this a bizarre comment to be honest.

What has Lionel Messi's wages got to do with inequality? Or what do you propose is done about it when you "have a look at these people"?

Like it or not, Messi's actions as one of the two best and most popular footballers on the planet is earning that value. Barcelona are making millions and millions off his name in terms of merchandise, profile, TV rights and, of course, the small matter of his goals and the trophies those goals earn.

The way to stop that is for people to en masse start ignoring football on TV and, if they like the game, watching their own local team. That would lead to more equality amongst football clubs. (We know this because it's what happened in the past, and there was more equality amongst football teams)

What you're proposing sounds more like a communist approach. But as I say, it'd be interesting to get a better of view of what you mean by "When we talk about inequality, let's have a look at these people too."

Interest in most sports is driven by fostering an interest in them when people are young. The people who build that base are probably unpaid volunteers and kids playing in crap facilities.



If that were not the case, then you would not have different sports in different countries. You don't see American football or ice hockey games on the TV here. Everyone knows those sports exist and you can see them on youtube.


The inequality is that those at the top of the pile are getting everything and those at the bottom have little. Same as any other inequality. You can have a wealthy elite in a country who make massive amounts while the little guy is starving. The wealthy person will say "I worked for my money and got educated" etc. Same idea though. Both are at the top of a pyramid built on others.

OptimusTractor

joseywhales wrote: »

I long for the days when teams like red star belgrade or celtic could be european champions.

Still possible on Football Manager.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

cdeb wrote: »

"Not one of European quality" is getting rather picky. That's a definition that's gotten far, far smaller in the past 30 years precisely because of TV money. If everyone supported a local team, there'd be far more teams of European quality. Again, we know that from when there was less TV money.

I'd say 90% of people in Ireland are within an hour of a senior club. And that's with a basket-case of a set-up here which actively discourages new clubs from joining the senior set-up.

"Local" in London is goigng to be different from "local" in Tipperary and teams in cities are going to have bigger fan bases and therefore larger incomes than those outside.

Don't know the Irish set-up well enough to commment, but the challenge there is the population density. Somewhere like the Netherlands is going to be far easier simply because of numbers, ease of transport and infrastructure.

Regarding the less TV money/more teams, rememebr that correation is not causation.

There is a salary cap in football, albeit at a club level, not a player level (and you can argue as to how well enforced it is for the really rich).

But if you're talking about a salary cap for individual players, then my question remains - why shouldn't Messi be paid what it's worth?

I don't think it's going to happen that people will turn off their TVs en masse btw. But let's not pretend that the root cause of inequality in football is everyone wanting to give their money to the same few teams or players. Unfortunately it's always easier to ignore this and think the problem is with other people instead.

For teams, as done in AMerican football. As I said, though, I don;t know or think it would work because of economic differences. And, as PAwwed Rig pointed out, overseas markets like China.