PPV for Villa Games

[weedman]

1 hour ago, John said:

Martyn Ziegler's very interesting report on yesterday's meeting, from The Times today:

"The Premier League has earned more than £5 million from the first two weekends of pay-per-view (PPV) matches but clubs have agreed to review the price after accepting that demanding £14.95 per game has been a PR crisis. At a meeting today the 20 clubs decided to stick with the fee for the next two rounds of matches but agreed to review PPV pricing after the international break, with a decision due to be made on November 5. It is highly likely that the PPV fee will be reduced to £9.95 to fall in line with the sum charged by clubs in the EFL, in the hope that the cut will persuade fans’ groups who have boycotted the games to drop their protests.

The clubs were told that the first nine PPV matches had brought in an average of 39,000 paid subscriptions, totalling £5.247 million, though some of that money will go to the broadcasters. Some matches attracted fewer than 10,000 subscriptions, and none more than 100,000. The average was calculated before the Brighton & Hove Albion v West Bromwich Albion match on Monday evening, which is likely to have attracted fewer than 10,000 paid subscriptions.

Mike Ashley, the Newcastle United owner, has urged the Premier League to cut the price to £4.95 per match but, according to sources at the meeting, the clubs were told that would actually cost money to produce. Some club chairmen also raised eyebrows at Ashley’s stance on the issue given that Newcastle were the only club to vote against a rescue package for clubs in League One and League Two. The Premier League review will aim to find a price tag that will raise viewer numbers considerably and therefore increase income. Satisfying disenchanted supporters will also be essential. The Liverpool fans’ group Spirit of Shankly has already raised £81,000 from people donating the £14.95 fee they would have paid to Sky Sports Box Office for Saturday’s game against Sheffield United. Other groups have organised similar boycotts.

Premier League executives will also consider the fact that some clubs will feature on PPV more than others because the “big six” teams are selected more often for live Sky and BT Sport matches, so some fans will be asked to pay more than others. However, there appears to be little room for manoeuvre on that matter. Some clubs proposed that the review considers making the matches available only via their websites, but that seems unlikely to be pursued either.

The Premier League clubs will also hold further talks with the FA over the governing body’s ultimatum regarding signing overseas players once post-Brexit laws come into force from January. The FA has told the top-flight clubs that it will not agree to their demands to be allowed to sign young, unproven talent from across the globe and that it will instead recommend to the government that the existing rules for non-EU players — under which permits are awarded based on international appearances — are extended to cover all EU players in future, too."

That is absolute bullshit about it costing them money at £4.95 per match. We don't pay £4.95 per match now (taking subscription into account) and they still find the money to spend billions on the rights. A little thing called adverts that they show repeatedly throughout the broadcast seems to cover most costs normally, if anything with no half time analysis they can just play a solid 15 minutes of adverts instead and make more money than normal can't they? 

[Davkaus]

52 minutes ago, weedman said:

, if anything with no half time analysis they can just play a solid 15 minutes of adverts instead and make more money than normal can't they? 

I agree with the rest of your point, but not this. Adverts have diminishing returns as breaks get longer.

The longer an advert break, the less effective they are, and the less they'll recoup, typically. think about it, would you sit there for 15 minutes watching ads? 2-3 minutes, with content to come after, people will watch, and the advertisers get their eyeballs, but 15 minutes of ads will see everyone get up and do something else until the second half.

[weedman]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

I agree with the rest of your point, but not this. Adverts have diminishing returns as breaks get longer.

The longer an advert break, the less effective they are, and the less they'll recoup, typically. think about it, would you sit there for 15 minutes watching ads? 2-3 minutes, with content to come after, people will watch, and the advertisers get their eyeballs, but 15 minutes of ads will see everyone get up and do something else until the second half.

Fair enough, maybe a good incentive to them to throw a couple of pundits at it? Not the proper ones like Carragher or Neville but the shit ones they pick up in the Championship or talksport. Just some drones to chat rubbish to get people to watch the ads? I'm sure they'd still turn a decent profit at a fiver with all that 

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

By my reckoning, charging £20 a month, assuming 10 months a year, they'd need 8,325,000 subscribers to break even with the pre-covid model, and then consider that they were trying to push for extra games to be broadcast to expand the current TV deals.

Your international fans estimate is, as you say, incredibly ambitious, I'd go so far as to say incredibly unrealistic considering that international fans can already get all PL games - and more -  for far less than that as part of their TV packages. I think the PL could only hope to replace the domestic broadcasters. The UK is pretty much an outlier in how much we pay for sport in general. I also think they might have some concerns around taking PL games off the other broadcasters and risking something like rugby filling the void as Sky's premier sport - obviously that's not something that happens overnight, but in the long term it could have an effect.

It could work, but it's a lot riskier and less lucrative than you make out, IMO.

I don't think 10million subscribers is unrealistic if they made every game available.

The WWE Network has 3million subscribers, for example. And that's wrestling.

 

It's probably not as easy as I've made out, but it's clearly achievable.

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, weedman said:

That is absolute bullshit about it costing them money at £4.95 per match. We don't pay £4.95 per match now (taking subscription into account) and they still find the money to spend billions on the rights. A little thing called adverts that they show repeatedly throughout the broadcast seems to cover most costs normally, if anything with no half time analysis they can just play a solid 15 minutes of adverts instead and make more money than normal can't they? 

That's probably because they make loads of money from advertising and subscriptions because of those matches. The extra free matches they had would have had millions of people watching them

But nobody (relatively speaking) is watching the PPV games so they won't be making much money from advertising. And nobody is going to get a new sky subscription just to watch the PPV games, so it adds no revenue for them from that point of view.

They pay money for the rights because shit loads of people will get a sky sports package, or even just Sky in general, purely to watch the Premier league.That's where they make their money. There's no incremental revenue for them from PPV games.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Stevo985

[Davkaus]

It's definitely achievable, I think setting a fair price that encourages adoption without the PL's greed running rampant may be the biggest obstacle. 

I do wonder what it'd do to Sky's prices too. Keep in mind they'd still have the CL, for example. Suddenly fans need this new subscription on top of the others if they still want to watch non-PL games. I expect fans would end up paying more, we always do. We'd at least be getting something out of it though.

This is also an interesting read, the effects of games being broadcast on gate receipts. I wonder what effect *all* games being broadcast would actually have https://footballperspectives.org/broadcasting-live-matches-and-stadium-attendance/

Quote

Estimation shows that gate revenue is reduced by 19.7% (or £232,237 based on the average gate revenue for all clubs) when the match is broadcast live for all clubs. Compared to existing studies, at the extremities, Allan (2004) estimates a similar effect to be 7.7% and Garcia and Rodriguez (2002) estimate 46%. The marginal effect is reduced to 2.4% for just the “top four” clubs and increased to 21.5% for the “bottom five” clubs. 

They do note the financial benefits of being broadcast outweigh the gate receipts, though it doesn't take into account the less tangible factors such as atmosphere, and the long term effects of that impact. The club would almost certainly be better off, and most of us will be happier being able to legally see every game. I wonder how often we'd actually sell out VP though. 

[Zatman]

40 minutes ago, weedman said:

Fair enough, maybe a good incentive to them to throw a couple of pundits at it? Not the proper ones like Carragher or Neville but the shit ones they pick up in the Championship or talksport. Just some drones to chat rubbish to get people to watch the ads? I'm sure they'd still turn a decent profit at a fiver with all that 

oh no

[tomav84]

34 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

It's definitely achievable, I think setting a fair price that encourages adoption without the PL's greed running rampant may be the biggest obstacle. 

I do wonder what it'd do to Sky's prices too. Keep in mind they'd still have the CL, for example. Suddenly fans need this new subscription on top of the others if they still want to watch non-PL games. I expect fans would end up paying more, we always do. We'd at least be getting something out of it though.

well sky don't currently have CL, but it would be an interesting bidding war between them and BT to get the CL games, on the basis it will be the main football each of them are showing

[Davkaus]

Ah, I thought Sky did have it. You can tell how long it's been since I've watched broadcast TV! 

[John]

2 hours ago, weedman said:

That is absolute bullshit about it costing them money at £4.95 per match. We don't pay £4.95 per match now (taking subscription into account) and they still find the money to spend billions on the rights. A little thing called adverts that they show repeatedly throughout the broadcast seems to cover most costs normally, if anything with no half time analysis they can just play a solid 15 minutes of adverts instead and make more money than normal can't they? 

Unless Sky/BT are not making public the amount they are charging the PL to put these PPV games on, because it is such an eye watering amount that it would eat up the £4.95.  

[fightoffyour]

1 hour ago, weedman said:

Fair enough, maybe a good incentive to them to throw a couple of pundits at it? Not the proper ones like Carragher or Neville but the shit ones they pick up in the Championship or talksport. Just some drones to chat rubbish to get people to watch the ads? I'm sure they'd still turn a decent profit at a fiver with all that 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

That's probably because they make loads of money from advertising and subscriptions because of those matches. The extra free matches they had would have had millions of people watching them

But nobody (relatively speaking) is watching the PPV games so they won't be making much money from advertising. And nobody is going to get a new sky subscription just to watch the PPV games, so it adds no revenue for them from that point of view.

They pay money for the rights because shit loads of people will get a sky sports package, or even just Sky in general, purely to watch the Premier league.That's where they make their money. There's no incremental revenue for them from PPV games.

If they took back the international rights and integrated them in house they would easily surpass the kind of numbers you're both talking about. Plus, they can quaite obviously charge more than £20 a month for licenced venues.  

The potential audience must be in the billions, no?

[The_Steve]

Another reason why I won't give a penny to Sky or BT and instead support food banks

 

[The_Steve]

Outrageous 

 

 

[It's Your Round]

So that’s every one of our games since PPV was launched. What a disgrace this is. Regardless of whether they drop it to £9.95 or £4.95, I won’t be paying for it. They can **** right off. My local food bank can have my money, one piece of good that has come from this. That, and the fact that more people have now found better ways to watch the games. Hopefully meaning much fewer Sky subscribers. 

[villa4europe]

Why change the kick off time?! 

[Davkaus]

Do not pay. If you can, give it to charity, but whatever you do, do not pay.

It'll be free on a variety of sites. Vote with your wallet.

[nick76]

Just a complete embarrassment in the current climate.  Clubs should be ashamed of themselves....forget that, Villa should be ashamed on themselves because that’s all I care about.

People are dying, people have lost their jobs, businesses or are deep in debt because of Covid.  People are struggling and need something, this should be a time clubs give back to the community, something to take their minds off the hardship at the moment and football can help with that in their own way but instead they see opportunity in a closed market to drain, extract and gouge money out of their loyal fan base.....

Embarrassing!

[The Fun Factory]

Down with this sort of thing.

[The_Steve]

55 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Just a complete embarrassment in the current climate.  Clubs should be ashamed of themselves....forget that, Villa should be ashamed on themselves because that’s all I care about.

People are dying, people have lost their jobs, businesses or are deep in debt because of Covid.  People are struggling and need something, this should be a time clubs give back to the community, something to take their minds off the hardship at the moment and football can help with that in their own way but instead they see opportunity in a closed market to drain, extract and gouge money out of their loyal fan base.....

Embarrassing!

How is it that Mike Ashley has somehow made himself look good out of this? I honestly think Purslow should be banging the drum about Villa being the most selected. It’s so grossly unfair.