There was tremendous news for football fans this evening when it was announced that Sky and BT Sport will pay a combined £5.1bn for the rights to show Premier League football for three further seasons from 2016-17.
Having struggled through a period of great austerity, it means that the hard hit clubs – some of whom can barely afford to pay mediocre players over £100,000 per week – can now increase wages to the playing staff, managers and club officials.
Yet it’s not just that which will delight supporters of people barely scraping into the multi-millionaire bracket. It’s the knowledge that their clubs, as pillars of the community and backed by a coterie of custodian owners who have only the best interests of these august institutions at heart, will reward fans who have helped keep them afloat with more affordable ticket prices.
Although the last time there was a gigantic increase in TV revenue Arsenal, amongst others, increased the cost of attending matches, we’re assuming that was simply an administrative mistake and that this time the piles of cash will be used to benefit the people who, we’re told time and time again, are the ‘lifeblood’ of the game.
“With more money than ever before, it’s inevitable that ticket prices will tumble!”, said Hoss Gillenhooley of the Federation of Fed-Up Football Supporters Organisation.
“There’s just no way that clubs could be seen to be so greedy that even with all this extra money they’d consider upping the cost of attending matches.
“It’s great news. There’s even a real hope that some of this money might be invested in ‘grass roots’ to improve the quality of the game throughout the country and not just for 20 or so football clubs who exist in an increasingly surreal bubble of modern sporting fame and spotlight”.
Arsenal fan Clyde Rhino said, “I can’t wait until my season ticket is considerably cheaper than it is now. I might be able to bring one of kids to a game at last. Now I can keep this kidney that I could really do with, to be honest!”
When contacted by Arseblog News, an unnamed Premier League CEO refused to comment as he snorted fat lines of coke off a bar of gold while having hand-picked truffles and Beluga caviar packed up his arse by a high-class rent-boy he’d sourced direct from the Conservative Party’s special folder.
So, plenty to celebrate this evening as this is undoubtedly a deal which enriches us all, and not simply players, agents and football club owners, as well as the media moguls who are literally so rich they don’t give a shit that they spend money employing the likes of Michael Owen and Robbie Savage.
hahahahahahaha
but seriously supporters won’t see a penny
Arsenal supporters are bled dry when it comes to ticket prices. At best we’ll see a freeze for the next couple of years.
To be fair, though, Arsenal season ticket holders get 26 games for their thousands of pounds, and at every other PL club you only get 19 games because the CL and Cup games cost extra. Factor that into the per-game costs and our prices, while still high, aren’t entirely out of line.
That said, one would (perhaps overly optimistcally) hope that this Dionysian windfall might result in a lowering of our ticket prices.
Went to the Leicester game tonight – 26 quid and stood in the North Bank. Not thaaaat bad
I don’t get to attend the games. If I fly over to watch, 1 game would be the equivalent to a season ticket.
My TV subscription prices have sky rocketed 400%.
My Arsenal pub club charges $20 for a glass of beer on match days.
But I don’t mind if it means I get to see and cheer Ramsey over Hillier, and Walcott over McGolddrick…
Take that!
Yes, this is the real issue.
Whilst ticket prices *might* see a freeze, Sky and BT Sport will have to find that £5bn from somewhere. Ultimately that’s going to be piled on to TV supscriptions for homes and pubs and directly or otherwise, all of us Joe Public are going to be putting that money into the pockets of the players and the agents.
You can’t really be a football fan and follow your team without contributing to this grossly out-of-control spiral of money.
Here are a few money-saving tricks: 1) Our last BPL game this season is on the 24th of May. On the 24th of April ring up Sky and cancel your SkySports subscription (there is a one month notice period). Re-subscribe to SkySports in September or October on the day of the first televised Arsenal game you can’t see in person at the Emirates or watch at a pub with friends. 2) Boycott BT Sport because their pundits are all dim, low-quality ex-footballers with a severe disliking for anything Arsene Wenger or Mesut Ozil does. Based on our track record, you… Read more »
Although I’m coming from a much cheaper country, it still sounds like your Arsenal pub are a bunch of dicks.
C’mon be a lil bit optimistic.
This means with players coming through the academy like Akpom, Le Coq and Wilshere still to show his potential we should surely see the money go towards competing to get World Class players.
Have Faith.
Forever COYG!!!
Great for some people but means diddly to me, I only live half hour from the Emirates but can only afford to go to a couple of games a season.
Its unlikely im going to be able to afford to go at all in a few seasons (unless I find a better job obviously)
Rather see sh*t every week and get to support my team than having to watch on tv and have us compete for us world class players..
Maybe not a popular view but hey
You obviously haven’t watched Harrogate Town in the depths of winter… I miss very few things about the city of my birth, but watching the mighty Arsenal is one of them.
This article is a spoof right? It’s written very well but I can’t take it seriously. All this money means the football is more in demand and therefore ticket prices will go up… Maybe with this money, BT sports can now get a tent to cover the desk at the side of the pitch 🙂
You took the thoughts right out of my brain . . .
Huzzah! Money!
Classic economists’ situation. More money, same number of players equals wage inflation. Though we may take some better ones from other leagues.
Crazy that Burnley is wealthier than Ajax.
“Clyde Rhino” lol
Inspired response. Did I detect just the merest smidgin of irony?
We do we want?
Robbie Savage (or Michael Owen).
When do we want him?
NOW!
This post deserves a Emmy an Oscar and a Ballon d’or.
Stylo d’or
I have a question to you girls&guys, is there a possibility of expanding The Emirates (seats wise)? I’ve searched in google but found nothing really, maybe someone will know.
I’m asking because it can be a way of lowering ticket prices by expanding capacity (certainly it won’t happen in next 10, 15 years?). Stands probably won’t be introduced any time soon? I’m a foreigner so I don’t how some things look like at the moment.
no
Absolutely NO CHANCE!
That’s what Charlie George told us on a stadium tour a few years back.
I thought it was technically possible, but it depends on improvements in the capacity of the public transport network, so not likely to be any time soon – and all they’d have to do is replace the wide seats with cheap plastic ones.
The stadium was designed to be a 100,000 seater. The surrounding infrastructure (tubes, buses, etc) was considered by town planning as insufficient for that volume of people. Hence, the compromise was 60k. So, unless we embark on upgrading the infrastructure we are not going to increase capacity. The plans are in place but, it will not happen in the immediate future. It’s a pity really because we’d have had the largest stadium in the UK- bigger than our nemeses Manure. And that was really what dismantling the Invincibles and building the new stadium was about; being able to compete with… Read more »
yes we can expand the number of seat but arent allowed because of transport and security
No there isn’t. I was at the emirates a month back and took a tour with Charlie George and he explicitly said that even though arsenal can build a stadium ( and fill it ) with double the capacity the authorities won’t let them. 61,000 is the max capacity
allowed In London.
I’m picking up some sarcasm in places.
Now they can afford to coach Robbie Savage in further voice acting, continuing what is already a horror show.
About time! Some of our players were starting to look a little malnourished (or playing like they were against the spuds). Does this mean arsenal ticket prices will drop? Logically they should so of course they won’t.
Let’s rise against the 1%, into the top four.
Oh and another thing. Thanks TV rights for giving us another game that’s not on a Saturday afternoon! Football’s fucked!
My wife works for the club on the community side of things and to be fair Arsenal plough a hell of a lot of money back into local projects, a lot of this goes unnoticed. Supporting a club with our business model is not easy, for fans or the board.
A sterling response 🙂
Turns out my massive bollocks are worth more than my kidneys.
Absolute classic, luckily Arseblog has never been bought by the millions
Real football died in 1992….
A great day out, and change from a twenty.
Sky cunts.
No one seems to realise that when competing entities (Sky and BT) both win the rights to broadcast matches, we as viewers lose out. Unlike most instances where competition should result in lower prices and/or improved service as customers are able to choose between competing providers, in this instance if a viewer wants to watch a match, they have to subscribe to the broadcaster that is showing that match. In the old days the Sky monopoly on Premier League matches meant paying Sky to watch said matches, now it’s necessary to subscribe to (pay) Sky and BT to watch all… Read more »
Spot on. Split broadcast rights might favour the clubs and milk the most money out of the game, but now instead of paying one subscription we need to pay two.
Then you have to choose a “package” from each subscription service that is basically beefed up “Freeview” (don’t get me started on the irony of that name) with 85 channels showing endless re-runs of the Big Bang Theory plus the sports channels, which are really all we wanted in the first place.
One of the best arseblog news stories I have ever read
The league will be tougher to win next season. Expect more of Leicester vs United (5-3), City vs Burnley (2-2), Arsenal vs Hull (2-2) etc.
I have never spent a single penny on Sky and never will. I rarely get to games, living too far away, just the odd away match when the Arsenal are in town. But I get to see every single game on a stream and, though the image quality is poorer and there is the occasional freeze frame, the knowledge that I am not contributing to truffles and caviar entering executive’s rectums via young men from Chelsea is entirely worth the inconvenience.
They talk about protecting the atmosphere at Saturday kick-offs by not screening all 3pm games, this is just nonsense. All that is really happening is that clubs stay in the driving seat and can charge what they want for tickets. Until this rule changes and is brought into line with the rest of the world, ticket prices will continue to go up.
The problem with text-based sarcasm is that some people are going to take this article seriously
Excellent use of double sarcasm there. Or was it? This is why smileys were invented. : /
Well, as far as I am concerned it will only mean paying a larger sum of money to watch premier league football on tv.