When you sign up for Sky Sports you are more or less guaranteed a season ticket for Arsenal and Chelsea. Whether you support them or not,the TV coverage for these clubs is constant week after week throughout the season. Income from TV Coverage ensures they maintain a healthy bank balance, whereas Northern clubs receive little coverage and income and obviously are poorer as a result of it! A glaring example pointing at The North-South Divide and Sky's obvious bias in favour of Southern clubs which of course surprises nobody!
Wouldn't go that far as both Manchester clubs are on telly an awful lot and so are Liverpool, Newcastle and even Sunderland. It's about which teams they find most entertaining at the end of the day and thus will get them bigger ratings. I personally don't watch all of them.
Three of the five most broadcast clubs are from the north(Man United, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool), if there's a north/south divide, it's in favour of the north.
Are all clubs not paid the same television rights no matter how much they on? (Dependent on league of course). I would assume sky show these teams as they are the most supported around the world and therefore increases their customers?
Everyone gets a minimum amount from Sky and a certain number of games, once their standard allocation is used up, they get paid for each game shown, so the bigger clubs end up getting more than the rest.
The Premier League have devised 6 packages, where each package allows that broadcaster to show 23 games. (Each package has stipulations like first pick, second pick etc, but I won't go into that). So Sky have 5 of these packages, and ESPN has the other. ESPN therefore will show 23 games this season. Sky will show 115. For every package, each team much be shown at least once in the league, and a maximum of 4 times. I.e if ESPN showed Wolves Vs Aston Villa for example, that obviously counts as a showing of both Wolves and Aston Villa. This is a reason why some unexciting looking games are picked for live coverage, simply to get their picks out the way. So Sky with their five packages have to show everybody at least 5 times, and can show a team up to 20 times - the only team they showed a maximum number of times last season were Manchester United. As for the money, they are each given an equal figure and then an additional sum of money for each time they are shown (£582,000 per live TV appearance in 2010/11); 2010/11: Highest earner: Man Utd - £60.4m Lowest earner: Blackpool - £39.1m 2009/10: Highest earner: Man Utd - £53.0m Lowest earner: Portsmouth - £31.8m [Wonder where our money went here then?]
Interesting info. I think its about time sky let us watch whichever match we want. Its not as if they dont film it. Dont care about having a commentator so thats not an issue. Although I can see the point that people may stop going to the games, I dont think you can beat the atmosphere of being at a game. However for those of us who dont live near our supported teams then only being on sky twice a season isnt enough. I would happily pay to watch city if part of the fee went to city.
Sky have a commentator and co-commentator at every game (bar the ESPN 23 games) so the commentator thing wouldn't be an issue, and like you say, they have the cameras at these games too. The only thing preventing them letting us see which game we want (like Football First on a Saturday night on Sky) is the European Law preventing any broadcaster in our country show at game on a Saturday 3pm (except the FA Cup Final).
Don't know why they can't have Football First further split into Premier League,NPC,NP1,NP2 etc and then pick one of six matches from each division. Would get each team on the telly more plus at a time which would not put off fans going to the match. The technology is there
As Sky are taking over the league rights and will be doing their version of the Football League Show for next season, there's likely to be some changes in the way things are done.
Moving away from the top clubs - Fulham,QPR,Crystal P, Reading & Watford seem to get more TV coverage than say,Leeds,Middlesboro, Sheff W A lot of interesting info submitted
I have never rated the Football League Show anyway. It's on too late for starters. Hope if Sky take it on it is done in the Football First format
I'm afraid that's not true either, Leeds get way more coverage than anyone else in the Championship, last season they seemed to be on every other week.
The highlights are really short and other than the featured game, it's little more than clips of the goals(and people getting of coaches for some bizarre reason), hopefully Sky will give it a more in-depth look and ideally, split the leagues.
I'm sure Sky would love to do a more in-depth look at the Football League, but ultimately it comes down to cost? That would be where I would get the clubs more involved though. A fair share of them use their own commentators and such for regional view/websites/local news, etc. Why not Sky use those feeds of the games? They already give alot of money to each club they show and could just incorporate this use into that price, the club can't exactly turn it down because Sky will just choose another game with a more willing club who wants the money. I don't think Sky are producing their own Football League Show type programme though are they OLM? They already have Netbusters on Monday evenings and Goals Express at 7 on Sky Sports News on the Saturday. I imagine they would be reluctant to show something on a Saturday evening in direct competition with its own Football First programme. The only thing that has changed between the past three seasons and the next three seasons is that Sky have acquired the '10 First Pick Championship Games' that BBC were given by the Football League.
I don't actually know, I just assumed that as they'd taken over all the highlight rights, they'd be doing something more in depth with them.
In Italy every single serie a game is available to ppv and fans just pick and choose what they watch on either a tv season ticket or ad hoc basis. This particularly helps Juve and their fans who can't get to games, as they are the best supported team in every single city save for Florence, Rome and oddly, Turin. Strange but true that Juve are the best supported team in Milan.
...and coincidentally, 11 teams in Serie A have average attendances under 20,000 - 7 average under 15,000.
