Premier League rights from 2019-2022 awarded

Have only seen this on the excellent a516digital, but reports that due to their woeful lack of funds generated from the last deal that the Premier League will be adding another match on Saturday nights from 2019, which will help take the number of live matches from 168 to 210. They obviously expect that to generate more money, which in turn means they expect fans to cough up more money too.

The quality vs quantity argument has come up in another thread here this weekend and definately think the same argument applies here - the more matches available means the lower the average audience for them.

http://www.a516digital.com/2017/11/premier-league-tv-rights-more-games.html

Will the TV companies spend the money? Of course with Amazon now trying to get sport there be here in a shot to get some of the action.

As all football league games will probably be broadcast outside of 3pm Saturdays. I expect this to happen sooner or later with the Premier League and I think that’s a good thing.

Whilst I don’t disagree with more games being made available, I certainly welcome the creation of the Saturday Night fixture. I’d wish to think the powers that be will scrap the 5:30pm ones, however I can’t see that. I find those most inconvenient to watch.

I can certainly see triple Sunday fixtures becoming more of a thing. To attract the big teams for midweek, Monday or Friday nights is nigh on impossible whilst there are European and Cup competitions.

I'd rather they just scrapped the 3pm blackout and let the games be broadcast - have a guaranteed minimum of 5 games played then and then 5 games which get exclusive slots.

I don't think broadcasting the lower choice games at 3pm on Saturdays would affect attendences at all - anyone swayed by games on the box would already likely be missing them for the lunchtime or evening kick-off anyway.

I know that certain matches in the UK aren’t restricted to be broadcast in certain regions like the NFL or Baseball games. Are all matches post 3PM broadcast?

If not all post 3pm broadcasts are aired simultaneously would there be a demand for an equivalent of DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket? DirecTV offers it for new subscribers for free but for existing subscribers it $281.94 for the season. The service allows you to access all out of market (as the local teams air on the local Fox or CBS station) games. It has a multivewer screen where you can watch eight games simultaneously. DirecTV or the NFL do not produce the game broadcast instead they rely on the CBS or Fox broadcast teams.

The NFL also offers a “free” service (included if you subscribe to a sports tier” called the Red Zone which provides whip around coverage when a game gets into the Red Zone (between the 20 yard line and the goal line) where it will focus on a game where a touchdown or field goal is attempted. I’m not sure how that would transfer into traditional football as far as I know goals can be attempted at any distance.

Just take a look at all the games that air on a Sunday. The “early” games start at 1PM and the “late” games start around 4 or 4:30PM. Sunday Night Football (NBC) , Monday Night Football (ESPN + a market affiliate) and Thursday Night Football (CBS and NBC split it half and half with maybe two or three games a season airing locally on either the NBC or CBS Affiliate depending on which network produces it) are all national games.

It’s not really comparable to NFL in that all games are broadcast nationally. The only “regional” broadcast if you like is the one 3pm game broadcast to Ireland only, where there’s no blackout.

The nearest equivalent to RedZone is the BT Sport Goals Show which runs for UEFA Champions League games, where there are up to eight simultaneous 7.45pm KOs on group stage nights. But RedZone exists because any given region in the US will only receive two of the 1pm ET KOs and one of the 4:25pm KOs.

The NFL (and other US sports) have a quite admirable commitment to keeping games available free to air that doesn’t exist in this part of the world - even the up to two games each week nominally exclusive to pay-TV (MNF and half of TNF) get an airing on local ABC or CBS/NBC affiliates in the participating team markets. There seems to be no talk of any US sport doing a 100% exclusive deal with ESPN or the like.

As for the Premier League, I’m another person who suspects that give it another ten years and all matches will air outside of 3pm.

There are usually 10 Premier League games each weekend with 3pm on Saturday the traditional kick-off time. The blackout from 1445-1715 exists not only to protect attendances at the Premier League but also all the way down the lower leagues, where matches also mostly kick off at that time. So televised matches have always been shown outside of that window, firstly on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights but as more and more games have been included in each new TV rights deal, more Sunday slots have been added, Saturday early evenings and lunchtimes and most recently (and not entirely successfully) Friday nights.

There's some talk now over what remaining slots can be used and one suggestion is that there may be some simultaneous kick-offs, for example two rights holders having matches in the same slot. This has never been done before outside of the final day of the season, where all 10 games are played at the same time and Sky shows 2 or 3 where something is at stake.

Internationally, every single game is sold in the package and there are many countries where they are all made available, and there would be a great demand if this would be made available in the UK but this won't happen while games are played during the 3pm blackout. The opposition to moving more matches outside of Saturday 3pm is not just due to tradition but also because of the way it inconveniences fans who attend games - as a season ticket holder I always have to wait for each month's televised fixtures to be announced before I know whether I can make it to games and for away fans (many more travel to away/road games than in US sports) it means waiting to confirm travel plans and evening games can be problematic for fans travelling long distances.

Another idea that sometimes comes up is clubs selling their own rights and fans subscribing to just their team's games. This won't happen while all 20 teams have a vote as at present 50% of domestic rights money is split evenly between all teams, with 25% based on league placing and 25% on number of TV appearances (with rules in place to ensure minimum and maximum appearances for each team). Clubs selling their own rights would increase the financial gap between the bigger and smaller teams. There was recently an attempt to change the overseas TV rights money, 100% evenly split between clubs, to give more to the bigger teams who attract the big audiences worldwide but this was shot down by the rest of the league.

The nearest thing we have to the Red Zone is BT Sport's Champions League Goals Show, which moves between all eight simultaneous Champions League group games, with quick replays of all goals and major incidents. It can be done because the rights all belong to one broadcaster and they can (well, contractually must!) show all matches in the competition. It works really well and is a great watch when there isn't one particular game you want to see. I hope it'll still be possible to do from next season when there'll only be six matches at 8pm with two moving to 6pm.

There used to be a black out rule for NFL games that games couldn’t be aired locally if all tickets weren’t sold 72 hours before kickoff. So stadiums that had low attendance would actually “reduce” the number of seats in their stadium by placing tarps over them.

It irritates me that NBC used to carry and broadcast every premiere league match but this season decided this season to only carry about five matches free with the rest being sold for a $49.99/season package (ontop of a probably $200+ internet and TV bill). It’s quite disappointing as they promised that the matches would be “free”. I am definitely curious as to how much money they are making. I believe the games can be viewed on a regular TV if you use Comcast’s X1 system but otherwise you have to stream them.

Even though the idea of clubs selling subscriptions was shot down would you forgo your season tickets if you could only watch your team at home (on your TV) and stream alternative camera shots for roughly the same season ticket price? I believe some of these in the US passes allow you to do that and that’s why game attendance has gone done. But stadiums are trying to get them back with 4K video boards, expanded food options from cheap to expensive.

I imagine it’s easier to travel especially when your all in the same small country (no offense) plus one in Wales. For trivia the drivimg distance between Newcastle United’s St James Park to AFC Bournemouth’s Dean Court is 293 miles. Meanwhile the distance between the (probably) the northern most stadium, Gillette Field, for Patriots and to the southern most, Hard Rock Stadium, for the Miami Dolphins is almost 1794 miles. Its no wonder more Premiere League fans travel to games you could probably make it a day trip.

It’s too expensive in the UK and we don’t even get Premier League TV and it’s associated shows like Premier League News, Fanzone etc i had high hopes when Sky Sports PL launched I thought it would show PLTV programming but nothing much

You'd think they would show those programmes. They have a lot of downtime on that channel.

Worth noting you're being asked to pay less per season than UK fans pay per month.