New TV rights deal

Listening on the way up last night, I hear the announcement.
Then when I heard that figure (£5.136 billion), I nearly swerved off the M6.
“It’s a great deal for English Football!”
How? – In what way is that a great deal for English football?
What is English football these days anyway? – surely there has to be some English in there for it to be called English football.

Radio 5 were interviewing “the world’s first woman football agent”, Rachel Anderson and whilst I say fair play to her and all those other parasites of the game for making a living out of someone else’s talent, she just didn’t have the first idea on how to justify the deal. When questioned how grass roots football will benefit, she said they will, the money always “trickles” down , so they will get their share.
Nonsense, clap-trap and other words that will be replaced by asterisks on here .
The only word of any sense that she uttered was just that one, “trickles”, because it certainly is nothing more that that if at all.

Good old rant and right on the button with your comments.
I am both hopeful and fearful that this is a big nail in the coffin of TV-rights.
Sky's shares have dropped today, so perhaps for the first time, shareholders can see that such stupid sums are not sustainable.
I'd dearly love to see the TV stations (especially Sky) brought to their knees by such profligacy.
I fear that the net effect will be an ever widening chasm between PL and FL. I hope that the Alex management structure and philosophy can withstand the backlash.

Implosion is on the way.

This new TV deal is just too much, it's joked about and people take the p*** out of AMF and Stand and other people “taking back our game” but it really is a serious issue now.

£5 billion for Premier league TV rights is ludicrous when you consider how little of that reaches lower leagues and grassroots, and also when justifying such high ticket prices when there is so much money being pumped into football from TV audiences, it's killing the game and alienating working class people in cities like Manchester and Liverpool from real football. The saddest thing is, any lower league club could genuinely could be struggling for cash and not one person at the FA would give a toss, as shown recently with Hereford as one example. How long until teams like Crewe can’t make enough money to survive from bringing players through the academy and spending within our means without a sugar daddy backing us up, and end up dropping to non-league. Football is not long off becoming like NFL, a few massive

Great post Somerset.
Rant? I dont see it like that, more like as it is and good on you.
When I saw the news I felt sick in my stomach and another nail to drive me further from football. I am adding this to my list of rants ie.

Players falling down after a touch
What is a fair tackle?
High admission prices
Players wages
What happened to Saturday only fixtures?
and finally... Sepp F*****g Blatter
>:( >:(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Worcesterman

...
and finally... Sepp F*****g Blatter
>:( >:(

---

I've posted a lot today, (sorry, you've probably noticed - it's my day off! ;D), but when it comes to posting, surely it's all about quality - not quantity!!
Worcesterman has just taught me that!!!
Nice one!! :D

Excellent post, Somerset; by no means too lengthy and just how I feel. I just wish the top half dozen or so clubs would p... off to form a European super league and let English football get on with a decent football system without them or the money.

It was a great response, Somerset in both quality and quantity. So much so that it was probably what any football fan would have been thinking when they heard this appalling news. Even the commentators on Stoke last night said their response was unprintable.

Did you hear Scudamore say this was good for 'youth' in the English game? So are they now prepared to fully fund the academies like ours and give them all a reason to go flat out to help future England teams? I will ask Dario the next chance I get?

I can't understand why Sky would increase the last package by 70% when that was OTT. And that doesn't include the BT and BBC multi million pound agreements either. I think BBC is paying something like 300 million just to show highlights of these games.

Now the technology is here and all football matches are videoed it should be easy to provide live feeds to our computer/TV of each match via subscription which surely is one way for the lower leagues to generate income without affe

No wonder my phone bill keeps going through the roof... just to help to pay for BT Sport, which I don't have! Disgusting. Money continues to ruin football.

Not until we decide to switch away from Sky and BT will this obscenity end. It is good to think that Sky has bitten off more than it can finance without putting up the cost of sky sports, that might put a few off, but no doubt the rest of us will have to pay more too so one way or another they will finance this deal.

This could be a good day for English football if some of this money was handed down, but the chances of Scudamore allowing money to filter down is about nil. The premiership forced us at gunpoint to join EPPP now its time to pay for that but Scudamore is only interested in the premiership with there foreign owners and foreign players and no doubt he is paid well for selling out English football. This is a deal for the owners some players and agents, ordinary fans are not important as long as they turn up.

Scudamore is scum the premiership are scum and while I'd love to see it implode I believe the biggest threat if for the league clubs who Scudamore believes are irrelev

The most telling statistic is that the deal makes every single Premier League game shown on live TV to be worth £10m. Accrington Stanley tweeted that just ONE live Premier League fixture is therefore enough to pay their entire club's wage bill for the next twenty years.