Only Leicester can hold their heads up high. Only one club out of twenty opposed the proposal to charge fans an extra £14.95, on top of the expensive subscriptions to BT and Sky, to watch what would have been untelevised matches.
It is the final nail in the coffin for the idea that Premier League clubs do not care about their fans. They are merely consumers. Ferran Soriano's blushes may have been saved as it seemed his suggestion for B teams was going to be the worst PR move for the Premier League this week. They did it themselves, hitting that nail with some force.
The fee is a staggering amount. It's a price for a Box Office boxing match. No offence is intended here, but West Brom vs Burnley is hardly Box Office. Season ticket holders still have to pay, which is ridiculous. If the price was £5, it would've been accepted as a fair price. £14.95 is completely unacceptable when the reason from Premier League clubs is that it is to make up for loss of revenue, having just spent £1.2 billion in the transfer window, an increase from last summer when Covid-19 hadn't had such a detrimental impact on football's finances.
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| Action from the 2016 Connacht football final between Galway and Roscommon Photo by Chris Sloan |
Football is a working class sport and especially in the midst of a pandemic, these people will be struggling financially. Your football club being rich does not mean the supporters will be. There should be a nationwide boycott of these matches, which for the past six months have been made available for free by Sky and BT. Premier League clubs cannot spend that amount of money and then cry "poor me" days after.
The Premier League has been vocal in its support for the return of fans to the stadium, sharing a petition that has over 192,000 signatures. Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, told The Times this week that fans must return "to provide that missing ingredient". This isn't about the match day experience for fans. This is about the global product of the Premier League. Fans are corporate entities in the Premier League these days and it stinks.
The GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) in Ireland has got things right on this issue. For the upcoming Allianz National League matches, the organisation's own streaming platform, GAAGo, is broadcasting what would have been 23 untelevised matches for 5 euros. Not only that, but a system will be set up by county board to allow those in hospital and care homes to watch for free.
The GAA is a community-orientated organisation and hasn't been taken and molded by globalisation. Your club is where you are born - there is no proper transfer system where clubs can pay fees for players. It's what non-league football is like but on a national scale. 5 euros is a cheap price and GAAGo is an excellent service. The Premier League could learn from the GAA and create its own streaming service to cater for fans, but that isn't likely.
Gradually, with the invasion of nation-states, oligarchs and adventure capitalists, the soul has been taken out of the Premier League. The people are the soul of the GAA, which is an amateur organisation despite being the biggest sporting body in Ireland. Liverpool's fans may be socialists, highlighted by the work they do with food banks to help their community, but their owners, and any in the Premier League, are capitalists who only look at the dollar sign.
More and more people are realising that your Premier League club doesn't care about you. You're just a source of income for the owners. The financial aspect of football at the top level has destroyed the community side that made us love football.
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