This article is taken from the March 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine, why not subscribe? We're currently offering five issues for just £10.
youThree in the afternoon on Saturday is not what it used to be. While soccer fans once looked forward to the weekly start in unison, they now need a forgiving boss, a schedule manager, and entire logistics teams to get to lunchtime and late-night games. Friday, Monday and weekdays.
For games that start on Saturday afternoons, some things remain as they were. While fans from all over the world can tune in, those in Britain are prohibited from doing so, at least legally. Every week the inevitable messages appear on football social media accounts: "Anyone have a stream?"
The Premier League should launch its own streaming platform, advocates insist
We don't know how many millions of fans are keeping up with their teams by watching illegal broadcasts of matches online, but the problem is significant enough that the Premier League has cracked down on websites that show them. Hesgoal.com stopped showing matches in English in March last year, following a US court case in which the Premier League tried to identify their owners, and the website was shut down by US authorities in December.
Some reports suggest that hesgoal.com attracted 40 million regular users, a quarter of them from the UK. And judging by the weekly traffic on social media, his disappearance hasn't caused those fans to give up their search for live football, just to focus their efforts elsewhere. The demand is there, and if the demand cannot be satisfied legally, it will continue to be fulfilled illegally.
Considering rapidly changing technology, the eclipse of linear television, and the success of streaming companies from Netflix to Disney+, many are beginning to wonder if the existing football streaming model is, to use that terrible term, adequate. for your purpose. A streaming deal agreed last year between Major League Soccer in the US and Apple TV means all matches will be available to subscribers around the world. Some European leagues, like Poland and the Netherlands, have done something similar. So why shouldn't you follow the Premier League?
The argument in favor of "Premflix", as some call it, is quite simple. The Premier League should launch its own streaming platform, advocates insist. The technology is there, and the fans clearly want it. We must end the ban on broadcasting games on Saturday afternoons, they say, and let freedom take off. Fans could pay less than they do for their existing subscriptions, but due to demand for specific matches and personalized content, the Premier League could earn even more.
The idea is not entirely far-fetched. All Premier League matches have been broadcast on pay-TV during the pandemic, and lower league matches are broadcast live, filmed from a single camera and without any match analysis, for £10 a time.
The Premier League's existing contract to broadcast matches in the UK is with Sky Sports, BT Sport and Amazon. It was traded four years ago, and between 2022 and 2025 was worth £4.8bn, with international rights worth a further £5.05bn. But some club owners, notably Todd Boehly, who bought Chelsea last year, believe the rights are undervalued and are looking to American tech companies to win a higher price. Apple TV is reportedly interested in bidding for the next round of UK broadcast rights.
However, some experts urge caution. First, there is the risk of reputational damage caused by technological problems. This, however, seems to be an exaggerated problem. Other leagues are already proving the concept works, and when Amazon first started streaming matches, fears about buffering turned out to be misplaced. There can be a short delay (the word of the trade is "latency"), causing fans to get automated alerts telling them their team has scored before they see it "live" on their screens, but with the rollout of 5G across the country, this won't be a problem for long.
Soon we will be watching all the football we want, when we want to see it
The second challenge has to do with money. The Premier League already receives billions from the broadcasters, and far more than any rival league, so why would it want to change? But this seems to misinterpret the competition, commercialism and cold, ruthless bargaining power of the Premier League, which after all exists less as a sporting governing or regulatory body, and more as a collective with the sole purpose of negotiating the revenue of television. Especially for this generation of club owners, growth and profit are the goal, and nothing - not lethargy, complacency or clinging to familiarity and tradition - will stand in the way.
The Premier League does not need to build its own streaming platform. In this sense, the skeptics are right and the advocates are wildly naive about the complexities of technology and the way business is conducted. Disney could have made the decision to pull its content from Netflix and Amazon to set up its own streaming service, but it first acquired 20th Century Fox to be sure it could do so. The Premier League will not do that.
And, of course, it could be that even if the tech companies were to bid for the rights, Sky would outbid them. New entrants will conveniently raise the price. But in the end, the technology, the future of streaming, and the simple matter of what fans demand all point in the same direction. Soon we will be watching all the football we want, when we want to watch it.
