Virgin Media want all 380 Premier League games live on TV
Virgin was the loser in the most recent auction of rights in the UK, with Sky paying £4.2bn (€5.7bn) for 126 games per season and BT taking 42 games for £960m (€1.3bn), an 80% increase on the current deal.
At the heart of that deal are two main pillars: A commitment by the Premier League for clubs to sell rights collectively and a promise to protect the 3pm blackout window (between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday) to safeguard attendance in lower league football.
Those pillars have led to scrutiny by experts in competition law as well as by Ofcom, the communications regular for the UK, after Virgin filed a complaint, claiming that by making only 41% of all matches available to broadcasters the Premier League is keeping prices artificially high and restricting choice to consumers.
That investigation is not due to report for some time — it has already taken a year — but Virgin Media chief executive Tom Mockridge has chosen this month to turn the screw, writing a column in London’s City AM newspaper and undertaking a round of interviews, including with BBC News sports editor Dan Roan.
Quoting research that shows 77% of fans feel football on television is now too expensive, he called for all matches to be made available for live coverage from the 2019-20 season and for the Premier League to circumnavigate the 3pm rule by introducing US-style regional blackouts.
This would prevent, for instance, Manchester United being live on television in Manchester on a day when the likes of Bury, Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale, Altrincham, or Stockport were playing at home.
“The Premier League argues there is a consumer benefit in limiting the number of matches. We would argue the opposite,” said Mockridge. “It’s up to Ofcom to act as the referee. Their primary aim is to protect the consumer. What is the consumer benefit in showing only 40% of the games on TV?
“The Premier League shouldn’t be able to say it’s exempt from normal competition law. It should be treated like a big business. If you go across Europe almost every football game in the major leagues is available on television, the same in the States with NFL, MLB, and the NBA.”
That attempt to cast Virgin Media as saviour of down-trodden football fans, however, has been met with a withering response from those who attend matches.
The Football Supporters Federation today made it clear that fans are firmly behind the 3pm Saturday blackout, telling the Examiner: “The Saturday 3pm kick-off is still a very important thing to match-goers, it’s a tradition going back 100-plus years, and the majority of FSF members support the blackout because they appreciate its economic important to clubs in the lower leagues.
“The level of support throughout the English football pyramid is amazing and that unique characteristic of the game needs protection. Executives from teams such as Macclesfield Town say as many as 400 can be lost from there gate when a local Premier League side is featured on TV at the same time as they play.
“Just because something is good for the casual TV viewer doesn’t mean it is also good for match-going fans.”
The FSF is firmly against any proposal for more matches to be shown live on television in future and has also made clear its support for the collective sale of TV rights — insisting football should be treated differently to the world of big business in order to protect the sport as a whole.
A spokesman added: “The FSF strongly supports the principle of collective rights sales. As we told Ofcom it ‘enables an element of more equitable income distribution between clubs in the Premier League, thereby helping to maintain a genuine competitive edge within the competition’.
“You can see from the unexpected success of Leicester City this season that fans enjoy seeing so-called smaller clubs challenge the established Champions League contenders.”
Andrew Mills, head of recruitment at League One club Millwall said: “I feel insulted as a football fan that Virgin Media are posing here as acting for the fans. We all know that’s not the case. If what they are worried about is supporters paying too much then why not campaign for all those games to be shown free on the BBC instead?
“There is big support in the lower leagues both for the 3pm blackout and the collective sale of rights. We’d like more money to drip down to the lower divisions, of course, but the way we sell the package is 100% right and we are the envy of the football world because of it.”
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