October 28 – The Premier League are not moving on its controversial pay-per-view (PPV) broadcast arrangements for the next two rounds of matches but clubs have agreed to review the pricing after that point.
There have so far been two weeks of PPV matches – nine in total – that are charged, via Sky Sports and BT Sport, at £14.95 per match.
Fans have criticised the high price with many choosing to donate the same amount to food banks in their cities as a protest. Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley said that the price should be dropped to £5 to make it more reasonable, while the Premier League will more likely agree on a price of about £9.95, the same price charged by clubs in the English Football League.
At their meeting yesterday the Premier League clubs saw the first set of PPV numbers showing an average of 39,000 buys per match – about £583,000 per game (including 20% VAT). In total that equates to £5.24 million of revenue for the PPV games.
The deal with Sky and BT Sports is that they are paid the costs of producing the games with a formula for dispersal of income thereafter to the clubs still to be agreed.
Costs of production to produce a Premier League PPV service matching the current broadcast standards of the regular TV matches are likely to be in the region of £80-100,000. In comparison EFL PPV matches are produced at a cost of about £8,000 per game via a 4-camera automated production system and centralised editing system.
When launching the PPV broadcasts, the Premier League was targeting buy rates that matched stadium attendances. During the 2018/19 season, the average Premier League attendance was 38,168
Reported figures for the first nine PPV matches have none achieving more than 90,000 buys, but with two games exceeding 70,000. Three of the matches had less than 10,000 buys.
The Premier League will ultimately compare its PPV numbers with Amazon Prime who in October 2019 delivered the first of its £90 million three-year package of Premier League matches streaming 10 matches over two mid-week nights on its Prime Video platform. Amazon said millions watched games and that both nights delivered record numbers of sign-ups to the Prime subscription package since launch in 2007.
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