The award of a Premier League game package to Amazon Prime is seen as a game changer and will be the start of legal mainstream streaming in the U.K.
The Premier League know they are fighting a losing battle and must plan to allow football supporters in the UK to watch football matches streamed legally to their TVs, tablets and phones in the future.
The penny has dropped with the PL – the ‘pirates’ are winning and the series of cut price offers from Sky for their products demonstrates the serious revenue losses they are suffering as the streaming operations becomes more and more sophisticated and reliable.
It’s utterly outrageous that fans in American, Australia and Germany can watch live games we cannot legally watch in the country of origin.
The antiquated rule of not screening football matches on a Saturday at 3 pm should be abolished. Within the next five years, we may see the introduction of a pay for view model for all Premier League and domestic cup games with online season tickets to watch your team all season in glorious high definition or buffering without fear of prosecution.
It truly is time that the only matches of serious interest to fans is those involving the club they support and the need to make that happen legally is totally apparent to all but the most short-sighted
Charging a tenner a game for pay for view or £250 for a TV season ticket could bring in hundreds of millions for individual football clubs and blow the collective £5.3bn they received from Sky and BT out of the water.
Maybe attendances at matches would drop initially but the extra income they received could make football truly affordable dropping match tickets to attend in person to a tenner too to promote full stadia with atmosphere with proper fans.
The current legislative landscape is outdated and nonsensical. Outside of England, the rules are also imposed on contract. In Norway for example, it is allowed to televise 1 of the 3pm Saturday matches (usually the “big” teams get that slot). Allowing other nations to show these matches, when the internet is mature enough we all get a good connection, will clearly resulting illigal streaming. I’m one of those, but if there was another option, I would probably pay for good quality and reliability. Fighting that is a loosing battle. Once the rule is removed, it also allows individual clubs to join the competition by airing their own subscription based channel (QPR does this). Better yet! Allow Sky, BT, Amazon etc to all buy licenses and let them in turn compete on price and user experience!
I totally agree this is the way it has to go.
However, the result will surely be greater financial disparity, as the clubs sell their own rights and money is then distributed based on volume of interest as opposed to league placing or a more graduated distribution.
Also, I don’t see that this will beat the illegal streams as while there is still a way to see the games at minimal outlay, and couple that with an IPTV sub that includes much more than a few football matches, why would those fans already doing that move to a lesser offering for more cost.
i will never pay a £10 to watch a football game simple as that , i watch it free, all the site that charge all direct through many free sites, so why pay to watch it. i never have and never will