New TV Contract 2017-19 set to increase by 45%

That implies that that it wasn't an utterly absurd idea with absolutely no merit until the new tv deal. Which it was.

 

The new deal is a 70% increase, not 45%. An expert on Football Finance from Sheffield University has just been on the radio saying this deal will mean a club like Hull City will receive up to £150m a season from it.
Makes the £1m sponsorship we might get from changing our name to Hull Tiggers look a bit pathetic.
Final nail in the coffin.

 

It already looked pathetic, cos we were never going to get £1m by changing our name. You'd have to be stupid to believe that.

 

Minimum £99 million up to £156million. More than Bayern, the Milan clubs and the like get from TV, in fact over double. Of course Bayern rake a lot more in through gate receipts sponsorship etc.
Nearly as much as Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Meanwhile the HDM will excitedly announce that KR or FC have announced a "near five figure sponsorship deal" with Joe Bloggs Pet Supplies or something similar.

 

Yes but just think how much more the PL could have sold the overseas rights for if they had a league with Hull Tigers in it to market?

 

That's because it would be bigger news in Hull, more people in the city would be interested in that that the goings on at the won nowt football club.

 

You are welcome to spend your time on the boards of our " world famous" rugby clubs instead of this one which is onlyn concerened with our won nowt club. In the meantime come back when you have less time.

 

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/31384481

None of this money will filter down to the fans. It'll all go to Ferrari salesmen.

 

BT aren't so much relying on individual subscriptions for BT Sport, they are more interested in attracting/keeping broadband customers who make them a lot of money hence giving it away for free.

 

Why should it?

The Premier League is a business not a charity organisation. If they want to help grass roots football then great but they should feel no obligation.

Surely the huge amount of tax paid from this money directly or indirectly will find its way to the government and/or local authorities who are the ones actually responsible for grass roots football.

 

You are quite correct there.

 

Excellent article as always from Martin Samuel
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ar...Premier-League-play-different-rules-else.html

Jerry Seinfeld earned roughly £175million making the television show that carried his name, and that was just for the ninth series, in 2004. The following year, NBC offered him a raise – a basic £3.2m per episode, which he turned down. At approaching £540m his estimated personal wealth makes him the richest actor in the world. Not that he doesn’t use his money for good. According to one report from 2013, he has a fleet of 46 Porsches.

And nobody bats an eyelid.

So it’s football. Only football. Always football. Football gets rich and out they all come. Football gets rich and the market is suddenly obscene. Seinfeld’s show sold premium rate commercial slots for NBC so was worth every cent – but if Wayne Rooney does that for Rupert Murdoch via Sky and Manchester United, it’s a national scandal. Football gets rich and the politicians, the pontificators, sense an opportunity in election year. Think of the fans, the grass roots, the England team. And what about the living wage? Dear God, won’t they think of the living wage? So, yes, let’s do just that

On November 6 last year, between the hours of 3.10pm and 4.58pm, parliament debated the living wage. Photographs of the House from that period show the intense interest. In one image, as many as 15 MP’s can be seen present, but there must have been a few more because Hansard registers that 17 spoke.

Vince Cable, quoted in the Evening Standard on Wednesday, condemning the practices of football clubs? No. Sadiq Khan, shadow London minister, who referred to the Premier League’s attitude as disgraceful? Sadly mute. Chris Heaton-Harris, who called on clubs to pay the living wage? Must have lost his voice.

Frank Field, who announced that he had written to all 20 Premier League clubs, suggesting they share the success by paying the living wage to staff? Not so vexed three months ago, it seems.

With the House so deserted one imagines anyone who wanted a say, was heard. So here is the full list of those who cared about the living wage before there was a headline in it. Conservative: Chris White, Guy Opperman, Guto Bebb, Richard Fuller, Robert Jenrick, Nick Boles. Labour: Mark Lazarowicz, Jim Cunningham, Albert Owen, William Bain, Susan Elan Jones, Stephen Timms, Jack Dromey, Jeremy Corbyn, David Lammy. Scottish National Party: Pete Wishart. Plaid Cymru: Hywel Williams. Not a peep from the Liberal Democrats, you will note, despite Cable’s bold stance.
The House heard that 22 per cent of people in the United Kingdom exist below the living wage – which is different, and higher, than the minimum wage. In Wales that figure rises to 24 per cent, in Northern Ireland 27 per cent, in the north-east, Yorkshire and Humber 25 per cent, in the East Midlands 24 per cent, the south east 18 per cent and London 17 per cent.

So either a lot of people are employed by Premier League football clubs – particularly in Northern Ireland, where there aren’t any, and Wales where there is one – or there are a whole lot of other companies that are not doing right by the staff. And the only difference between football’s downtrodden and the lowest paid cleaners at, say, a hotel, is that nobody ever got a page in the Standard advocating worker’s rights at a two-star in Leicester.

The parliamentary debate ended with this appraisal from White, Conservative MP for Warwick and Leamington: 'We have heard evidence of how important and good the living wage is for individuals, businesses and society. I think we all realise that we need to go further. It is important to remind ourselves that this is not just about living wage week; we need to be discussing and thinking about the living wage all year round.'

Hansard recorded that the question put was agreed to. 'Resolved, that this House has considered promotion of the living wage.' And that’s all they did. Considered it. Considered the promotion of it. Decided it was for life, not just for Christmas. And pottered off to their homes, all 17 of them.
So let’s not pretend the living wage is a fight that was at the forefront of parliamentary thinking until Burnley hit the jackpot. Some are advocating parliament getting involved if football does not determine to act more fairly, but that would place sports minister Helen Grant in charge of governance, when her £1,666.67 monthly charge for a London residence suggests it is not possible to commute to the capital from Reigate on one of 58 daily trains. So no thanks.

Of course, football clubs should pay the living wage. Chelsea do it, so should they all. That’s not the point. The living wage is merely the latest stick with which to beat a successful industry. Football works. Football is creating more working-class millionaires, greater social mobility than just about any business in Britain. In a world of cut, cut, cut, football can afford to spend, spend, spend. So it is hated, resented, for its success. For doing what politicians can’t and making the recession work.

 

Continued..

Now down to brass tacks: there shouldn’t be a living wage. The minimum wage should be upped to the living wage, and if our economy was as successful as the Premier League we could afford that. Even so, parliament has the power to make it law. But it doesn’t. It considers. It promotes. It does nothing – and then kicks football as if Richard Scudamore runs the national employment market.
This is how bad it is out there. Newsquest, the UK’s third-largest publisher of local and regional newspapers, has extended a scheme that has been running in local schools, charging students for writing opportunities. The school pays £100 and each participating student £20, writing one article a month for eight months, published in a local online newspaper, therefore building a portfolio. Just about acceptable as a schools programme, but Newsquest has now rolled this out in universities and colleges, to those seeking the first rung on the employment ladder.

It is a reversal of the freelance principle. This way, prospective journalists don’t get paid, or even work for free, they actually pay to work. And the Premier League are the bad guys? Our current employment laws are so messed up, with all the unpaid internships and cheap, browbeaten foreign labour, that we have lost all perspective, beyond empty soundbites.

Cheaper tickets, well certainly. Yet if you are wondering why clubs aren’t rushing to make good this promise, then you have forgotten about a principle called Financial Fair Play. Now that every last penny on the balance sheet makes a contribution to what a club can spend – with £50m fines and expulsion from tournaments threatened to those such as Manchester City and Queens Park Rangers, who transgress – the bill was always going to end up with the fans.

Dropping the prices for away supporters from the current average of £40 to £20 may not seem much considering the new television deal, but that could still balance out in the region of £1.25m per club per season, with 1.25m away tickets sold in total. That is money that disappears from the balance sheet. Yet certainly at the smallest Premier League clubs there will be a bottom line. Loose change at Manchester United is a new contract at Burnley
And subsidised tickets are a complex issue, again ill-served by the initial round of 140 character responses. Has it ever been considered that football clubs don’t actually want more away fans in their grounds? That some Premier League clubs would ban away fans if they could? That one club approached the Premier League with a view to subsiding 50 per cent of away ticket costs for their own fans, but then steadfastly refused to entertain the idea if a rival wanted to do likewise in the corresponding fixture?

And if £20 is plenty, as the slogan suggests, what if plenty more wish to go? What about additional policing and security issues? What about a rapidly expanding black market? However appealing in principle, this is an idea that needs to be properly considered and planned if it is not to backfire.

The same applies to support for the grass roots, a spectacularly vague term that seems to have expanded of late from parks footballers through all levels to the Championship and even the England team. The Premier League must look after them all, we hear. The Football Foundation receives £12m annually but had this figure been index linked from 2000 the figure would now stand at £100m. Paul Thorogood is the chief executive, David McDermott the chief operating officer. Has either man managed an annual budget of more than £100m, by the time additional funds from government and the Football Association are taken into account? Does the Football Foundation need that level of funding? For what, exactly?

We have seen what has happened at some football clubs with the explosion in television revenue. It hasn’t always been invested wisely. Yes, the Football Foundation would benefit with an increased allowance; but £100m? The Premier League’s donation would outstrip that of Comic Relief to charities throughout the UK; and just for football-related concerns. Now that would be obscene.
What isn’t obscene is the benefit to the city of Manchester from Manchester City, where Sheikh Mansour has done more for the eastern sector than any politician since the days of Balfour. Football clubs do an incredible amount of good that goes unheralded and, simply, the Premier League does not index link its outside donations for the same reason that a worker who receives a 10 per cent pay rise doesn’t suddenly walk into his local tailors and insist on paying £110 for a coat priced at £100. Additional money may be handed out, but perhaps in new areas. It would hardly be logical to keep shovelling ever-increasing funds to the same handful of lucky recipients.

If the FA really want aid for the grassroots it should perhaps look at the ineffectuality of its own National Game department in dealing with dwindling male participation levels, the reason Sport England decided to cut its budget by £1.6m last year. Indeed, before we think too harshly of the Premier League, we should perhaps ask why the areas of the game for which the FA has responsibility are in such disarray.

Why, when the Premier League cuts a TV deal for £5.136bn, at roughly £10m per match, the FA cannot find a sponsor for the FA Cup? While the Premier League is a lesson in how to grow and promote a brand, the FA has allowed the FA Cup to be pushed to the margins and rendered less relevant with each passing decade. The Premier League is now expected to swoop in and save the rest of football from its ineptitude. What is it doing for the Football League clubs, it is asked.

Considerably more, one suspects, than Tesco are doing for the high street butchers and greengrocers whose premises are now boarded up, driven out of existence by the invasion of supermarkets. No compensation there, we note, and none demanded by politicians either. No solidarity payments for taking the trade, given the advantage of subsidised land deals and free parking spaces. Indeed, nowhere else in business do we hear this call. Only one industry has to play by different rules.

'I hate, loathe and detest every single aspect of football,' wrote a reader to The Times on Thursday. 'This galactic sum of money is being paid for 0.5 per cent of the population. Does no-one read Gibbon's Decline and Fall anymore?'

Alternately, there’s Noel Coward.


You know, if you have any mind at all,

Gibbon’s divine ‘Decline And Fall’

Well, it sounds pretty flimsy

No more than a whimsy...

By way of contrast,

On Wednesday last

I went to a marvellous party...

 

On the face of it you are quite right.

But it is firmly in the premier leagues best interest to improve English grassroots football for obvious reasons.

 

Or expensive watch salesmen with knackered legs.

 

Completely agree, but its something they should want to do, most people seem to think because they are making vast amounts of money that they should be obliged to do it.

 

Don't forget VAT. Depending where their figure is coming from in the books, either their £6bn includes VAT and they only get £5bn for themselves, or the customers in your example would need to be parting with £102pm.

Surely that makes it an even more dangerous move for BT? Where Sky customers have to pay for the TV, and for the Sports package extra (so over £50), BT customers only have to part with what, £30/mth? (Surely it's not more than that, I know they're expensive but I get phone and unlimited (sort of) internet for £17.50/month)