I have been thinking (dangerous I know!). Don't you think it is odd that The Middle East and USA get unrivalled coverage of the Premier League? They have coverage of every game on either Al Jazeera sports, Bein Sports, or MSNBC Sports Extra / Fox. What other sport can you think of that has greater coverage worldwide than it does in it's country of origin? It would be like us getting coverage of every game in the NFL (if that doesn't happen already in America). All we get are 12.45 Kick off, 5.25 Kick off and then 2 games on Sunday and 1 on Monday. Whereas if you live in America or Dubai/Qatar etc you'll get the pick of the bunch. Now, I attend the games so the last thing I want is for the games to be re-arranged so much for the television but I was just wondering why we do not have such a great coverage, when it is us that are hosting these massively popular sporting events.
It doesn't seem that long ago that the only live football was the FA cup final. Even MOTD only showed one or two games. There is so much football on these days that it seems strange when there isn't a live match on.
I know... The dodgy streams are slowly over time becoming better quality... When Sky and BT realise the futility of trying to police these streams, they will realise the only way to keep subscribers will be to open up the matches to everyone.
If you chose the right country, would La Liga or Serie A also have better coverage abroad than in it's own country? Sky and BT's issue isn't with the streams though. The main issue is that UK law stops them televising games on Saturdays with kick offs between certain times. That severely limits the coverage here, and given it's been done to protect attendances at the grounds on a Saturday you can guarantee if they moved all football to another day that the law would be changed accordingly. Having said that, I might have just hit on an idea. Transport on a Sunday being ****e apart, could we just switch the PL to a Sunday only league. Same kickoff time for all the games every week and allow them all to be televised live. It wouldn't harm the rest of the league as they'd be playing on Saturday, so nobody would skip games to see the better football on the telly. It could actually boost attendances at lower league clubs. Last time we were in the PL and Huddersfield were having their centenary I had a season ticket there (so **** your ticket/travel restrictions WYP) because I knew we'd have enough games rescheduled for TV to let me attend both sets of games on a weekend to cover the cost (having friends that are Town fans to go with). If I knew we'd be playing Sunday every week I could easily grab a Dunfermline season ticket (or one for one of the Edinburgh clubs). I'm sure there'd be other fans around the country that would do similar with their local clubs if they knew there'd be no fixture clashes.
Add Australia as every match is televised here live. My husband watches most Hull City games although the 2am.kickoffs are sometimes a little challenging!
Yep, every other country in the world bar England in fact has better Football coverage. I had it explained to me the other day in a way that makes sense. If you were a.. Charlton fan, and all the PL games were on TV, some would be more inclined to stay in and watch the PL, rather than go and watch their team at 3pm. I don't necessarily agree that crowds would be all that affected, but I can understand the argument. Thing is, you can stream all the bloody games anyway.
We also get almost every game of the Mexican PL as well live. Game times can be a pain sometimes for sure. Every game of every sport here is televised live including the big college sports. It doesnt hurt attendances but our markets are far larger than yours.
How many American sports have different levels of competition though? If you've got say the NFL, what's the lesser competition that would be worried about losing fan attendance because they'd rather stay at home and watch the top level game?
They all have different levels of competition. College sports are huge here and they have attendances that are larger than most of the game that occur in the UK. You would be supprised to find out that college sports are actually the number 1 level if you went by attendances and viewership. The NFL is 2nd place to college football just as the NBA is 2nd to college basketball. My college basketball team which you have never heard of has a bigger arena than the KC and gets larger attendances than most NBA teams. The MLB has 3 levels of competition below them (4 or 5 if you count wooden bat leagues). Those levels will normally have 15-20,000 people who attend. The NHL has 2 levels below it (more if you add Canada into it) as well as college hockey. College hockey is really only big in the northern schools. Even the MLS has mulitple levels. College soccer clearly but we also have 2 other leagues that are below the MLS. One day hopefully they will turn that into a relegation and promotion 3 tier system. None of it hurts people attending. Hell my highschool baseball teams field had more capacity than most of the lower level english football teams do.
Not everything is on TV when it comes to the levels. Every minor league baseball team, hockey team will be on TV live but it will only be on tv in the market they play in. Every College game will be on live as well but only the large sports like football, baseball and basketball and only in the market they play in. Obviously the big games will be on national tv. There are even big highschool games that will be on tv but normally just in their market as well. I played on a baseball team when I was 17 that was on TV 4 or 5 times and we hit an attendance of 10,000 people. It helps that all of these things tend to happen on different days. In general the NFL is on sundays where college football is on saturdays etc. Although more and more schedualing sports on different days no longer occurs. If it was bad they wouldnt do it and clearly since they are adding other countries sports as well live on TV they do not think that it will hurt anything by adding even more.
What would be the attendances if none of it was televised? Having 15-20,000 attending doesn't prove that the higher levels being televised isn't affecting potential attendances. We got 16,000 in the 4th tier of English football, and we know we now get 24,000+. Those 8,000 people aren't all new to football in that time. Some of them are people who chose to watch the higher quality of the PL on TV rather than coming to our games, and there wasn't even a clash in the fixtures at that point. There'll have been a lot in the 16,000 that supported 2 teams who had 3pm Saturday games been televised wouldn't have bothered with us. EDIT: You've made another post since, I might need to edit this soon but I'm about to have a pizza so it can wait.
It might fill up the stadiums to capacity to not put games on TV but that wouldnt seem like a good idea to me. Lets use the San Jose Earthquakes as an example. Even with all the levels of the MLS the Earthquakes are the only team in the area. They probably have a regional market of 20 million people (just guessing dont quote me on that) and have a surface area capacity that is probably 2 times the size of the UK. Would it make sense to not have them on TV to get a couple thousand more people to attend each game. Think of all the TV revenue, jersey sales, tshirt sales etc that having houndreds of thousands of people watch the games live generate. When I lived on the east coast our "local" minor league baseball team was located about 2 hours from me. Does having them live on TV actually affect attendances? NO because there is no way everyone can get there every day anyway. My hockey team the Washington Capitals have 2 minor league hockey teams. One is in PA and the other is in NC. Does having them on TV actually stop people from going to the Capitals? No, becuase it would take some people 6 hours one way to get to them. Think about the area. The Capitals are the team for all of VA, WV, MD, DC and NC. The population of those states combined is larger than all of the UK. You want people to wach those games because they generate more revenue than the people who actualy attend the games. So it may end up filling the "pro" stadiums up to not put all the levels on TV live but in reality one would have to think that you would have less income generated by removing them from TV.
It's more local here Ellewoods. Within an hours travelling to Manchester I can think of at least 8 league teams off my head. Blackburn, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Burnley, Wigan, Leeds, Huddersfield. Add to those non league teams like Hyde, Halifax, Stockport. Macclesfield. There's probably many more. It's the attendances at these team's games that would suffer if The PL games were on TV at 1500 every Saturday. EDIT: In the olden days before Sky, Stockport used to play there games on a Friday night to avoid clashing with the Manchester clubs. This worked for years. They had decent crowds & challaeged in Div2 (Championship). It's when they were stopped from doing this that their problems began.
Yea I know it is more local and that is the big difference. Thats why I said in the intial post that our markets are far larger than yours. Edit: One point our "minor league" teams are not seperate companies. They are owned by the "pro" teams. So all the income goes into the same bucket. You point our rightly that if the PL games where all on TV that some teams would probably be hurt by that. Since our lower teams are not really there own thing it isnt the same problem or issue. If you are in the Yankees AAA team and you are called up to the Yankees you dont even sign a new contract. You just pick up your bag and now you are in the MLB.
But that's precisely the point, it affects attendance even when it's the same game. We don't ban Man U vs Chelsea being on TV at 3pm on a Saturday to make sure that Old Trafford is full for the game though. We ban it because if Man U vs Chelsea is on TV at 3pm on a Saturday the crowds at Scunthorpe vs Chesterfield are going to be affected because a good number of people from Scunthorpe will choose to watch the more convenient game with higher quality teams playing instead of making the trip to Glanford Park. Unless the junior levels are playing their games at the same time as the televised games there isn't the comparison.
They are played at the same time. Where there is less of a comparison between the US and the UK lies in your example. Lets pretend that the UK has the US system. Who cares if the Man U vs Chelsea game effects the crowds at Scutnrhorpe vs Chesterfield? Scunthrope is owned by Man U and Chesterfield is owned by Chelsea. The only thing that matters is if Man U and Chelsea make more money as companies having all the games on TV. Scuthrope and Chesterfield are not levels that matter anyway. What matters is Man U and Chelsea being the best teams they can be and they use Scunthrope and Chesterfield as player development teams. Man U and Chelsea use a draft system where players are forced into their teams. They are then sent to Scuthrope and Chesterfield to play games and develope into the best players they can be. They also make money off them but the thing that matters the most is providing Man U and Chelsea with the best players.
