[Albion] £14.95 to watch Albion

[AmexRuislip]

No chance
Paging Dr. No

 

[janee]

We Are Brighton.com

You have to admire the Premier League, Sky Sports and BT Sports. Just when you think they must have exhausted every possible method to fleece loyal football supporters, they go and find a new way to carry out open surgery on the wallet.

The latest plan involves charging supporters £15 per match to watch games that are not included in the normal live television schedule. It is in effect a PPV service for Premier League football on top of what we already fork out for television packages and season tickets.

According to reports, just one Premier League club voted against the PPV proposal. Take a bow Leicester City. The Foxes were the single voice sticking up for the everyday fan. The other 19 – including Brighton & Hove Albion – simply saw pound signs flashing before their eyes.

The financial commitment that goes into being a Brighton fans is a significant one. An Amex Stadium season ticket in the West Stand upper costs £650 and although the club stopped direct debits in September, we have already forked out six months of payments for a product we are unlikely to see in 2020-21, barring a minor miracle occurring and stadiums being allowed to open their doors. That’s the best part of £325 with nothing to show for it.

Brighton have said that any credit in the bank from this season will be put towards season tickets for 2021-22, which is nice. It’s not much use though for those fans who face uncertain futures work wise as the threat of a new lockdown and a second wave hanging over the economy.

That money sitting in the Albion’s bank account ready to go towards matches in a year’s time doesn’t help put food on tables or pay mortgages.

Add to the season ticket money spent another £150 for Sky Sports and BT Sports subscriptions and the cost of watching Brighton in 2020-21 is already at the £475 mark

If two thirds of the Albion’s remaining games are not selected by Sky and BT for their standard coverage, then supporters will need to find another £330 to see every match left to play.

That is bad enough. It gets worse though when you consider that Brighton are basically telling season ticket holders to pay £15 to watch a match which they have already in effect paid to see.

Imagine forking out your £650 for the season, only to be told that you need to pay another £15 on the gate at each and every home game. It is beyond a joke.

There seems little chance of clubs allowing season ticket holders to watch for free either. At last month’s Albion Fans Forum, Paul Barber said that doing so would breach broadcast contracts.

Supporters might have been the ones that kept Brighton & Hove Albion in business through the Gillingham and Withdean years, but it is very clear that the Albion now dance to the tune of Sky Sports rather than those who ensured there is club to do the dancing at all.

We will no doubt get a statement from Barber soon saying that the Albion have been hit hard by the pandemic and that every supporter paying £15 to watch will help the club out financially.

This might wash a little easier had a transfer window not closed on Monday in which £1.2 billion was spent by Premier League clubs. A further £200 million was paid straight into the pockets of agents.

And it’s for that reason that I won’t be paying £15 per game to watch Brighton this season. If the Premier League can spend £1.2 billion in three months on new players, then it doesn’t need to introduce PPV at £15 a game on top of a £150 commitment to a sports package.

Not to mention that Brighton have taken and kept half payment for a product which they are going to struggle to deliver, and are now asking for another £15 to watch every home game.

The good news is that there are other ways to keep up with the Albion. Illegal steams are going to boom in the wake of the Premier League’s decision.

If you don’t fancy hearing an overexcited Chinese commentator screaming the name Leandro Trossard, then you can always turn to good old fashioned radio coverage.

Brighton fans are very lucky to have the excellent Johnny Cantor and Warren Aspinall on BBC Radio Sussex. A lot of local radio stations are pretty biased in their coverage for fear of upsetting or besmirching the club and having their future access restricted.

Not Cantor or Aspinall though, who are refreshingly honest in their analysis. Aspinall’s passionate assessments about slack marking and disappointment at the lack of a new striker are worth tuning in for by themselves.

Or you could take your £15 and spend it at a local non league club, rather than handing it over to the mega-rich Premier League on top of the considerable sums you are already handing over.

The average Southern Combination League side will charge £6 entrance, £1 for a programme, £4.50 for a cheeseburger and chips and £3.50 for a pint. Which you can drink while watching the game stood anywhere you like.

Give £15 to a community asset run by volunteers for the love of the game that genuinely needs the money to survive? Or hand it over to clubs who make hundreds of millions of pounds in television contracts alone, furthering their greed? It’s a no brainer.

There is one other very good reason not to support the Premier League’s gluttony. Say 500,000 Liverpool fans pay £15 each to watch Jurgen Klopp’s side take on Brighton at the Amex.

Suddenly, the Albion are raking in far more in matchday revenue than they would with 30,000 in the stadium. Financially, it then makes sense for Premier League clubs to keep a PPV TV model and empty grounds over fans buying tickets.

We have always known that clubs don’t really care about fans; we are just cash cows to them. But even by the Premier League’s high standards, this latest way of fleecing supporters is extraordinary.

£15 every week on top of everything else I’ve paid to Sky, BT and the Albion to watch my team on PPV television? It’s not for me, Clive.

THIS, THIS AND ****ING THIS..............

Well done for this response. If all fans stay tight and refuse to pay this, then the fee will have to drop.

But looking at this thread, it's clear that fans will sell each other out if they can afford to. Just like they did when Sky first launched

 

[wigman]

Football will slowly die.
I will not pay that kind of money to feed Sky and the wages of overpaid footballers.
I am slowly growing bored of modern football.

 

[BNthree]

We're not fans. We're not customers. We're walking wallets.

 

[maffew]

Way way too much. Thats what a match ticket should be. If they charged a fiver per game, any club,PAYG, i reckon people would watch other clubs games too. 15 quids absurd and surely wont get that many takers. No wonder people stream and hack firesticks

 

[BNthree]

Because they are football clubs, administratively run as such, not broadasters.

To have each club's own streaming services, you need fully functioning, state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment, technicians, support staff, licences (UK and international), and on and on, with no £100m reward.

You'll also see Man C, Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal etc run away with the viewing numbers, leaving the likes of Brighton in its wake, and the gap between the large and small clubs widening further still. If Brighton made £10m from this, I'd be astonished. Man U, with its worldwide appeal, on the other hand, would easily clean up with 50x more.

Not talking about individual clubs, I'm talking about the organisation that is the Premier League. Any technical aspects are easy to overcome, just contract people to film it etc. That is the least of the worries. However your second point is very valid. The money distribution aspect of it. At the moment it is all very fair (or as fair as possible) but once clubs start demanding % of money based on % of viewers it all gets messy.

 

[clapham_gull]

The distribution of income is the most important aspect. If the big 6 can keep all the income from their home matches financially they will be on a different planet. EPL wouldn't last long as there would be a euro super league.

There are so many things that are technically possible but that doesn't mean the long term result benefits us.

Oh, I agree football will change substantially the Premier League would take over the world and would probably have a detrimental effect on football in foreign markets.

 

[BNthree]

The replies to the club's tweet about this are going well.

https://twitter.com/OfficialBHAFC/status/1314620282653552647

[tweet]1314620282653552647[/tweet]

and you if fancy an essay from Barber in your inbox there's the We Are Brighton suggestion:

https://twitter.com/wearebrighton/status/1314658126038290432

[tweet]1314658126038290432[/tweet]

 

[Change at Barnham]

I paid a tenner to watch the Carabao Cup game at Preston, but not sure it was particularly worth it with free extended highlights available the next day.

I'm not sure I want to pay £15. I might at a stretch pay a tenner for a PL game, but I think they've pushed their luck a little too far so I'm more likely to look for a dodgy stream and keep the £15 in my pocket.

 

[essbee1]

Just one question - sorry. If we already have Sky (which I added to my Virgin broadband) package,
would I still have to pay an extra £15 for the matches? Unclear to me.

 

[Nitram]

Two minds. My sports subscriptions never covered all the games I wanted to watch, certainly not all Albion games so it could be viewed as an extra choice. Trouble is we have been spoilt with games free to view on subscription to date. If they had not done that this might have been seem as a more positive move.
Will take this an an excuse to get a few friends round and split the cost.
Glad the club are getting the money. I don’t think it as paying twice as the money I’ve paid out already for my season tickets will make the next season free or cheaper.

 

[BNthree]

Just one question - sorry. If we already have Sky (which I added to my Virgin broadband) package,
would I still have to pay an extra £15 for the matches? Unclear to me.

Yes you would have to pay an additional £15 as it is pay per view.

 

[drew]

Just one question - sorry. If we already have Sky (which I added to my Virgin broadband) package,
would I still have to pay an extra £15 for the matches? Unclear to me.

Yes.

 

[Terry Butcher Tribute Act]

Have the club's definitely said there won't be discount for STHs?

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[essbee1]

Yes.

Thanks Drew.

I take back what I said earlier then. I've already f*****g paid for Sky and BT to cover as many matches
as I can. I'm damned if I'm paying an extra 15. B******x to that.

 

[Weststander]

In the main, I think I won’t bother, unless my son’s keen to watch a game. Sacrilege to say, but football isn’t my world.

Probably against the NSC tide, I’m more likely to pay for a fair contest such as the Albion v Burnley or CP, rather than Citeh.


Regarding the PPV principle, I’m not wound up or angry, but I think this is another seminal moment where football in this country is changing forever. Once CV19 is just a bad memory, the PL clubs will not put this nice-little-earner Genie back in the bottle. Supporters already pay for (not cheap) season tickets and likely spend at the stadium on a match day, whilst some spend significant dosh on travel home and away. Many pay for Sky and BT Sport. Now the lure of PPV to watch your club. All in all, taking a far bigger chunk of disposable income than those simple days of rocking up at turnstiles.

 

[BNthree]

Have the club's definitely said there won't be discount for STHs?

Not definitely but no mention of it here:

https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/news/1859431/west-brom-and-spurs-matches-moved-for-tv

Supporters can opt for the pay-per-view offering via Sky Sports, but will also be able to follow the games on the live match blog, or tune into live commentary via MyAlbion TV.

Whereas at the end of last season when STH were given free passes it was mentioned from the start.

 

[Hu_Camus]

....
what price the pies?

 

[clapham_gull]

"Offering", "Content", "Value Added Material" all terms that stay on powerpoint "deck" created by Marketing Depts.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Thanks Drew.

I take back what I said earlier then. I've already f*****g paid for Sky and BT to cover as many matches
as I can. I'm damned if I'm paying an extra 15. B******x to that.

So you will get to see the same games that are paid for on those services?

No one is forcing you to pay it - the anger is a massive over reaction to something optional.