#TVMoney

The day of the new Premier League television broadcast deal arrived. With rumours abound that the deal would be touching £4 Billion , or roughly 25% up from the existing deal, it was to some surprise that the final deal came out at a massive £5.136 Billion for the exclusive domestic rights for three years from the 2016 season onwards. With Sky facing competition from BT Sport there’s no wonder the next contract is massive. Having lost Champions League action from next year Sky were clearly determined to hang on to their Crown Jewels and promptly secured five of the seven packages available, cleverly broken down by Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore. Although figures have yet to be confirmed it is believed that Sky paid circa £4.2 Billion for their package, and BT chipped in with the best part if £1 Billion for their share. Astronomical amounts of money to cover Europe’s biggest, and allegedly best football competition.

So who benefits most from this latest windfall ? Well certainly the players won’t be taking a pay cut anytime soon. Wages will invariably soar with clubs cashed up. The team finishing bottom of the Premier League in 2016/17 is guaranteed a minimum £100 Million. Yes, finishing BOTTOM ! Last years Bundesliga champions in Germany, Bayern Munich, collected 36 million Euros from their competitions TV deal. The champions of England in 16/17 will get £150 Million. Nearly 5 times as much. As we all know, 95% of this will end up in players pay packets, but that's a debate for another day.

A possible knock-on of this deal is cheaper match tickets for the regular fan. That’s the dream anyway. There’s no guarantee on this but the pressure from fan groups and to  some extent government to make tickets cheaper is gathering pace. The Football Supporters Federation (FSF) already host a campaign called “20’s Plenty”. They campaign for clubs to charge a maximum of £20 for away fans, and with even more money in the game there will be calls for this to extend to the Home fans too, if not in all of the ground then certainly in selected parts. How this will stand with owners plans to maximise profit we will see.

The loser in all of this will surely be the armchair sports fans. Already paying through the nose for the current package, Sky plan to show Friday night games from 2016. This will mean football on our screen’s potentially six days a week, seven when the Europa League games are on. A frightening thought is that the once sacred 3pm kick off on a Saturday may well be a thing of the past. For armchair fans this will be irrelevant. However a downside will be the inevitable subscription increase. After all, someone has to make up the increase in contract, and the existing customer base will be looking at a couple of quid extra every month for the privilege. As someone that campaigns for people to attend games in the flesh, and preferably at their local team, I for one won’t shed a tear for those that get their football fix from the comfort of their settee. Another victim in football’s ever increasing world of reliance on money, and lot’s of it.

Article by - Darren Norton

@Knockernorton1