The Fight for Football Fans

In their book Power Play, Boyle and Haynes argue; “a central element in the sport-television relationship revolves around the economics of the broadcasting industry and its use of sport as ‘television product’ in the drive to secure audience and subscribers.”
Are they right? Is football just being used to make the rich richer and the poor poorer by broadcasting companies? Or are they interested in the globalization of the game and delivering it to the masses? One thing we do know is that subscription prices are getting more and more expensive each season and it is starting to burn a hole in our pockets.
You can now expect to pay BSkyB around £50 per month to watch at least two Premier League games per week in their “Premium Package” which comes with hundreds of other mind-numbing channels. Irish company Setanta offer a monthly subscription of £9.99 for their two channels for at least two other Premiership games per week. Now that may seem quite a high price, but we must consider the amount of money that these broadcasters have paid the Football Association for the rights to show these games.
Sky paid £1,314 million and Setanta paid £392 million for broadcasting rights for the current season. This deal represents approximately £28 million to each Premier League football club per year, who in recent figures are shown as on average £50 million pounds in debt (with the exception of Manchester United). This is serious money that can make or break clubs and help keep their top players who on average earn five million pounds per annum.
But is it worth buying into? 3.7 billion people watched the 2006 World Cup finals which would have had the advertisers racing to broadcasters for 30 second slots which would have cost millions. World football is worth an estimated £160 billion so yes; it would seem that it is worth buying into.
This year BSkyB owner Rupert Murdoch was named as the most influential person in the world, with Chelsea Chairman Roman Abramovich at number 30, by Vanity Fair magazine. Sport evidently is a television product that does secure audiences and subscribers.
Recent deals involve the BBCs’ and BSkyB’s joint contract for the rights to show the so-called “B team competition” the Carling Cup and games from the Football League from the 2009 -2012 seasons.
It means Championship matches will be screened live on the BBC for the first time, with 10 first-choice games per season exclusively live on the BBC. The Carling Cup Final will be simulcast live with Sky, and two semi-final legs shown exclusively live on the BBC.
Under the new agreement, Sky Sports’ broadcast rights include 65 matches from the Football League, exclusively live, and the Football League play-offs, including all three finals, exclusively live. Sky will also show exclusive live matches from rounds one to five of the Carling Cup, two matches per round, and two legs of the Carling Cup semi-finals exclusively live. The new agreements are worth £88m per season to Football League clubs and encompass terrestrial and pay television, broadband internet, video-on-demand and mobile services. Meanwhile, the BBC's other football commitments remain strong; Match Of The Day is in the first year of a new three-year deal with the Premier League and has rights to show Euro 2008 next summer, and then the biggest events in international football i.e. the World Cups in South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014 (www.bbc.co.uk/sport).
Broadcasting has had a major impact on football and has had a large part in making it a global phenomenon.
In 2002, 106 million households were equipped with appliances to download pay-tv football. In the 2001-2002 season, the European television channels devoted 3.9 billion Euros to the payment of football broadcasting rights of an overall 5.5 billion euro bill for sports broadcasting (that’s 70 per cent). In 2003, broadcasts of football matches reached 61 per cent of the best sport audiences (The Economics of Sport and the Media; Jeanrenaud and Kesenne).
Referring back to the point made by Boyle and Haynes; it is true that the money from the broadcasting industry is a central element in the sport-television relationship and has helped globalize the sport, but it is not the only one. It can be argued that the public i.e. the fans are the ones that help make football global. They can choose whether or not to subscribe to watch games. It is their money that is going towards these clubs and helping it become global. Their money pays for foreign players and funds international competitions. Sales from the World Cup Finals in 2006 alone were over one billion pounds and sales from merchandising are at an estimated £170 million pounds per annum.
There are several central elements that are responsible for the globalization of football. Since public taxation and advertising can no longer grow much further as sources of football finance, it can be said that pay-tv has paved the way to a new era in the relationships between television and football.