The Premier League, since its inception in 1992, has been one of the most successful sporting leagues in both financial and viewing figures to date. Previously, the English First Division, the top twenty-two teams, broke away from the English Football League. They did this to be able to negotiate an independent broadcast deal, ultimately maximising revenues for the top clubs.
The aim to maximise revenues was certainly accomplished as the league had a bidding war for its rights between ITV and BSkyB (Sky). The latter won the battle as a five-year deal worth £304 million was agreed in May 1992. Fast forward to the latest rights deal for 2025-2029, and the domestic rights broadcast between Sky and TNT is worth £1.7 billion a year, with international broadcast deals mounting to £6.7 billion a year.
These numbers give a good understanding as to why the league has been loyal to broadcast deals as opposed to diving deep into an ever-growing pond of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, or the possibility of creating their very own streaming app. While the league has dipped their toes in the streaming world with Amazon holding rights to a mini package of 10 games a season for the previous 6 years, these deals were minor and minuscule to the big broadcast deals. Despite this, fans are becoming increasingly unhappy with the broadcast deals for a number of reasons. For the Premier League, the potential of cutting out the middle man and creating an almighty “Premflix” could multiply their profits even more.
Opportunities for ‘Premflix’
The money to legitimately watch Premier League games in the UK is by far the biggest concern for fans of the league. In order to watch all games on TV, it would require the consumer to have both Sky Sports and TNT Sports. This would cost between £60-£80 a month, depending on their contract length. This is not dissimilar amongst the international fan base, as fans from the United States would need to acquire Peacock, NBC and USA Network, which could amount to similar figures to the UK. Ireland operates very similarly to the UK, with the addition of Premier Sports, which often televises Saturday 3 PM kickoffs. These prices are at an all-time high, and with the cost of living increasing over the last five years, many fans simply can’t afford to stoke up monthly sums on a long-term contract basis like this.
This has led to a significant amount of illegal streaming and the use of “dodgy boxes/firesticks” to consume Premier League games. The Athletic’s recent anonymous survey of over five thousand participants showed that 47% admitted to consuming football via illegal streams. Corporations and police authorities have started to clamp down on illegal streaming providers and even potentially users in recent months in both the UK and across Europe. Just last month, twenty-nine-year-old Jonathan Edge, from Liverpool, was sentenced to three years and four months in jail for selling firestick devices. This was after continuing to ignore cease-and-desist letters. This has been followed by a two-week enforcement operation, attempting to push against illegal streaming. Additionally, last year, the Premier League sanctioned over 600,000 illegal streams to be shut down. Larissa L Knapp, former FBI Agent, now Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association (MPA), who are at the forefront of the battle against piracy, states that “They estimate losses of over 28 billion (Sports broadcast industry) that sports lose every year.”
Another frustrating issue for fans through UK broadcast deals is the lack of choice. Despite paying hundreds of pounds a year to watch Premier League football through Sky and TNT, not every game is on television. The latest TV deal Package sees Sky host 215 games a season, with TNT hosting 52. With 380 Premier League games a season, this means roughly 30% of Premier League games are not shown on TV. That means potentially not being able to watch your favourite team at all in some gameweeks, unless you actually attend the game or grab hold of the game via illegal streaming.
This is not helped by the longstanding 3PM blackout rule that still applies in England, Scotland and Montenegro. Brought about in the 1960s, when between Saturday 2.45 and 5.15 pm, the televising of domestic football was banned. The idea is to incentivise fans to still attend matches physically, not only Premier League games, but more importantly, lower down the football pyramid, where 3 pm kickoffs are the norm. Whilst the rule certainly has good intentions, in order to keep smaller clubs afloat, many suggest it’s now outdated and argue it wouldn’t affect attendance from lower league games. Live events matter to youth audiences and the longstanding and continuing lower league culture. This is backed up by aggregate EFL attendances consistently going in an upward trajectory over the last decade.
Customisation for consumers could grow immensely if the Premier League adopted their own streaming app. The customisation potential is endless. Consumers could pick specific packages that tailor more to their favourite team. For example, exclusive interviews, historical games, choice of commentator and exclusive one team subscriptions. Additionally, the access to data that the Premier League would receive from their customers would be potentially priceless for it. Currently, Sky and TNT receive all the data from their customers. If this switched, the Premier League could use its app to advertise specifically, by selling merchandise, matchday tickets, gambling opportunities and various other commercial packages. The extra monetisation of their fans could prove to be an infinite financial opportunity.
A one-stop app that hosted all games live, highlight shows, and individual team content would be an absolute dream for many fans. A monthly subscription in the region of £15-25 could entice millions of people away from the broadcast deals as well as illegal streaming. An academic paper from the University of Targoviște, Romania, suggested that if the estimated 200 million people paying to watch Premier League games globally switched to a £10 a month ‘premflix’ subscription, their revenue would rise to £24 billion a year.
Challenges of introducing ‘Premflix’
While this hypothetical sounds absolutely perfect for both parties, in reality, it’s flawed. Firstly, adopting an exact price point globally is completely unrealistic. The price range of the Southeast Asian market would completely differ from the UK market, due to geo-economic income disparities. Additionally, to assume 200 million people would sign up to a monthly subscription base at the same time is very optimistic. If we were to look into the UK market, to match TNT and Sky’s domestic broadcast deal of £1.7 billion a year, they would need 9.5 million people to subscribe at £15 a month, all year round. With a population of just over 67 million, that’s an almost impossible target. Another stumbling block would be the off-season. The Premier League begins in August and concludes in May every year. Monthly subscriptions would plummet in the summer months, making it inconsistent revenue and an opportunity lost for income.
This coincides with the next challenge, that a subscription-based model brings an element of risk as opposed to the secure broadcast option. The removal of the third party in showing live football would mean going from guaranteed business to business revenue to business-to-consumer revenue. Monthly subscriptions are very easy for people to opt in to and cancel for consumers. The safety net of broadcast deals is why so few sports leagues have gone for exclusive subscription models thus far.
If the subscription model failed to replicate the financial package of their broadcast deals, coming back to negotiate another broadcast deal would put the league in a much weaker negotiation position and would result in losing unquestionable amounts of money.
The logistical side of putting together a streaming platform would be a significant challenge for the Premier League. Reliable streaming servers, development of apps, cybersecurity and all of the technology involved for a smooth streaming platform that goes with it. Broadcast deals leave the Premier League with none of the hard work that Sky and TNT have to deal with. They essentially just sell their rights and sit back. A project as big as this would likely need reliable experience in this field, which means the possibility of bringing a third party in to help them. They would of course have a hefty cut of the subscriptions, so it has to be questioned how, even with the potential upturn, the risk involved is just not worth it at this moment in time for the clubs in the league.
The French top division, Ligue 1, may give the Premier League another reason to avoid a streaming subscription model and expose the risks involved in it. In 2020, a broadcast deal with MediaPro saw the media company win the rights to host French football for 4 years, decimating the last TV deal of €726 million per year to €1.1 billion per year. MediaPro launched Téléfoot, a subscription channel to show the games. In order to break even, MediaPro needed 3.5 million subscribers a month paying €25. The launch saw only 800,000 people subscribe to the channel. This loss was detrimental, and with the COVID-19 pandemic coinciding, they pulled their contract within 4 months of their 4-year deal. This proved catastrophic for French teams as their budget of €1.1 billion was cut significantly. The league still hasn’t fully recovered, this year launching their own streaming service, Ligue 1+, for fans to watch after another failed contract, this time with DAZN. Although this new subscription model has somewhat stabilised the league, it has put French football well behind the other top five leagues in Europe, losing key players such as Messi, Neymar and Mbappe throughout this period.
When breaking down both the pros and cons, it’s highly unlikely that the Premier League will launch a global-scale ‘premflix’ system for their league, despite the desire from many fans. The likelihood is that the Premier League will test a subscription-based Premier League platform in another market across Europe or Asia, as opposed to the domestic side, before any upscale arrangements are made. In the twenty-first century, sport is one of the last shared experiences that truly has to be watched as it happens. Broadcast television deals, while highly profitable and secure for the league, are now becoming increasingly outpriced for the fans.
Additional Sources:
https://stec.univ-ovidius.ro/html/anale/RO/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Section%203/49.pdf
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/dodgy-amazon-firestick-police-clampdown-b2663474.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz6j80j62evo
