Football Supporters’ Federation chairman Malcolm Clarke says that television companies should consider limiting the number of live games in order to benefit fans who are actually travelling to the stadium. He has recalled that the 3 PM kick off time for matches is a tradition in English football, but it is slowly being taken away from the fans due to the increase of football on TV. The Premier League is one of the most popular leagues across the world. It has helped the Premier league generate an incredible amount of revenue through TV rights, which now contribute more money than the ticket sales.
The recently sold rights for the 2013-2016 season is worth just over £ 3 billion. This incredible amount of money is being paid by BT and BSkyB for broadcasting live matches on TV in the United Kingdom.
The Premier league also gets a huge chunk of money by selling the rights abroad. However, this also has resulted in television companies moving fixtures around in order to provide the maximum live coverage possible. This has resulted in an increase of early kick-off, late kick-off, and Monday night football. The prospect of playing games on Friday night has also been discussed. The Premier league will soon be starting bidding process for the 2016-19 season TV rights, which are expected to fetch an even bigger income.
“Most fans think we’ve probably reached television saturation point and it’s not in the game’s interests to increase the number even further.
A 3pm kick-off on Saturday is part of the tradition of English football. We’ve lost some of that with the number of games that are now being moved, which many fans are unhappy about.But if it goes a step further so that you have got live television games up against the normal 3pm kick-off, it could have a very adverse effect on gates lower down the leagues and we would be opposed to that,” said Clarke.