Is there any hard evidence in support of the 3:00pm blackout, or is it simply predicated upon the assumption that people “might” stay away from lower league matches if Premier League games are broadcast at that time?
If given the choice, between full league coverage or club specific games, I would choose a club specific pass without hesitation. I have very little interest in watching games not involving my team, and it wouldn’t come as any surprise to me if the majority of fans chose likewise.
I suspect that is one reason why Sky/BT don’t offer such an option to their subscribers.
That is fair, and I would likely take the same option.
But had you offered me the option 20 years ago, I think I would have bitten you hand off to get as much football as possible
I don’t think it does, did have when it came in, baffled why they black out continental football at that time usually.
Club specific passes would become club specific revenues. That probably wouldn’t get 14 votes from the PL.
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So in protest of the £14.95 subscription charge for non Sky/BT game Newcastle fans instead donated to their local foodbank and raised £16000 - Fair play to them.
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Would be interesting to know how much they made this weekend from the passes and how many of those passes were bought by journalists who literally needed it for work.
So, so, proud of my fellow supporters. Not only they are doing their bit to stand by millions in dire needs, they sending a message to the perverted Sky+BT, loud and clear, that world is not rotten as they might have thought.
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Isn’t it the Premier League who are driving the PPV? Reports this morning say Sky and BT want to scrap it.
Have any official stats about the number of passes bought been released yet?
There has been the suggestion of dilution. Though I don’t buy that really.
If I’m not up to much on a weekend I’ll take in about 2-4 games that drops down to 1-2 if I am, it might be on in the background but sometimes not watching it.
I have noted our Leicester game doesn’t have a channel however all games seem to be listed on the same day so I expect some changes on that, maybe Amazon have a selection.
Wow, an unexpected advocate for the fans, Mike Ashley.
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Sky’s pay-per-view games have not attracted the viewing figures Premier League chiefs had been hoping for, with the British Audience Research Board (BARB) releasing their latest estimates…
…Now, ahead of a meeting about the future of the scheme on Tuesday, TV executive Joel Minsky has shared BARB’s estimates and they are not good.
Newcastle United’s clash with Manchester United attracted just 40,000 viewers, while only 20,000 stumped up the cash to watch Leicester City face Sheffield United.
The figures did increase for last weekend’s games, with 110,000 tuning in to watch Liverpool against Sheffield United and 140,000 paying for Arsenal’s loss to Leicester.
BARB sampled 5,300 households to get their estimates and Minsky noted that the “sampling is very statistically sound and is considered a gold standard in the UK as well as globally for TV measurement.”
These are only estimates, but I confess I’m a little bit disappointed with the Liverpool figures.
I had hoped the boycott might have proven to be more effective.
In many ways, it was
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True.
And It is worth noting that, because BARB estimates the numbers of people viewing, rather than households, not all of those 110,000 “viewers” will have been translated into subscriber payments; and not all of these viewers would have necessarily be Liverpool supporters.
But I had hoped our viewing figures would have been no more than the low tens of thousands, at best, with even more money going to food banks.
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Isn’t it the other way round? How can they measure viewing? You and I can be watching a game together while only you have paid the subscription.
I’m really disappointed with the figures. I mean don’t people already pay subscription to Sky/BT for the games. How come they didn’t mind paying the ransom as well to watch the game? Maybe less people will be paying in future as the additional cost starts to bite into their budget.
I was always really disappointed by the number of Liverpool fans who paid Murdoch his Sky ransom when most houses in Liverpool sprouted a satellite dish. I think I must have been one of the very few who refused to do so.
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That is my point exactly.
BARB use several ways to gather data, however the number of households included in the survey tends to indicate that this is from the BARB Panel:
The BARB panel is a sample of carefully recruited households and together, these represent television viewing across the nation…
…Ultimately, the Establishment Survey helps us to find homes that are willing to be members of the panel. Our target is to maintain a panel of 5,300 homes (including 200 broadband-only homes) that are representative of household type, demographics, TV platform and geography. There are over 12,000 people living in these homes, helping us to measure what you watch.
BARB extrapolate from this data to estimate the number of viewers across the nation, not the number of households that might be watching. And given that many households have more than one TV and/or other viewing devices, a count of households is irrelevant.
So, assuming that there is only one pay per view subscription per household, and several people in each household might be watching the match, the number of viewers does not directly translate into income from PPV.
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My assumption is that most of the people buying the games are retired and/or computer illiterate. Have a bit of extra cash and no way of understanding other methods of watching the game.
I don’t believe they sold 110k passes though. The wording seems odd to me in that article and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were using some sort of calculation to count multiple viewers per pass.
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