Pele coined the phrase, “the beautiful game” in reference to football…
This is thanks to its accessibility and the positive culture surrounding it. However, one of the latest decisions by Premier League executives has reduced both of those aspects in the sport significantly.
For some time now football has been a sport driven by money, which has allowed it to reach the mass audiences it has. Many fans in the United Kingdom have no other choice than to sign already expensive contracts to watch their favourite team play, for instance it can cost between £30 – £40 a month to subscribe to the two major sport broadcasters, Sky and BT Sport. In some ways, this has become a part of British culture as everyone has accepted that this is the only way to legally watch games from home.
But following the start of the 2020-21 Premier League season, both Sky and BT have announced that you can now pay a fee around £15 to watch a match that isn’t already selected for broadcast, much to the dismay of almost all fans of the sport.
Considering that tickets to actual matches can cost upwards of £30 per person, the cost of a pay-per-view ticket suddenly doesn’t seem as bad. Though what you are paying for with an actual ticket is much different to the pay-per-view football experience.
Sports like boxing and mixed-martial-arts have relied on pay-per-views as income for decades now, however this is a relatively new concept in football. In the aforementioned sports, the product of the pay-per-view is drastically different to what it is in football, high production value with many promos and a satisfying amount of analysis. In football however, there is a limited amount of pre and post match analysis which begs the question of whether the product is even worth buying.
Obviously the value of the product will always be a key debate, but perhaps the most significant aspect of this is the morality of it. Simply put, £15 is far too much money to watch a match that hasn’t been selected for broadcast, especially when considering that fans are already paying a significant amount to be subscribed to sporting packages in the first place.
Additionally, paying to go to games in person is much different than paying to watch it in your living room. With the decision seemingly coming out of nowhere, it seems to suggest that there has been next to no planning from the Premier League or the broadcasters themselves. They have made a snappy, short-term decision for a short-term monetary gain with very little fan consultation.
Another angle to approach the debate from is that we are currently living in very abnormal times, where perhaps people aren’t in the same place financially as they were before the Coronavirus outbreak. Football has long been seen as an escape from the real word by many, where they can forget about whatever is happening in their lives for ninety minutes and simply enjoy a game of twenty-two people kicking a ball around a grass field.
By overly monetising these games it has become harder to escape the stresses of the real world. Society is undergoing a very stressful situation at the moment and when people are under unprecedented stress they don’t need the temptation of paying high prices to watch the team and sport they love.
Despite all of the negativity involved in this situation, football fans have managed to show their humanity once more. One of the first games to be presented as a pay-per-view match, Newcastle United vs Manchester United, was largely boycotted by both sets of supporters. Supporters’ groups of both teams donated £15 to local food banks instead of paying that figure to watch their teams play under the new pay-per-view system. Once again, football fans have demonstrated the good that the sport can bring to local communities.
According to Sky Sports, this new box office service is a way of them being able to help ‘cover the costs’ of broadcasting but fans struggle to sympathise with them as they already pay significant fees to be subscribed to their service in the first place.
Respected Leicester City manager Brendan Rogers criticised the service, he said that: “I’m disappointed for supporters, at the moment it’s already very difficult for them,”. Interestingly Leicester City were the only club to vote against the introduction of pay-per-view matches in the Premier League, suggesting that perhaps the clubs are receiving a significant amount of the money raised from the buy, further adding to fans’ confusion.
With the world currently undergoing mass change in many different ways, stability is something that football fans would appreciate. As aforementioned, football has long been seen as an escape for many, so this change has made an already pricey sport to follow even more expensive than it should be. Major broadcasters could potentially justify their decision by providing a premium service, but fans haven’t even received that so far. They are cashing in on the fact that fans aren’t allowed into stadiums, knowing that some will pay anything to watch their beloved team play. For football to remain as “The Beautiful Game”, major broadcasters must scrap the pay-per-view scheme as it goes against all of the morals that made football so popular and accessible in the first place.
By Will Simpson