During the early 1980s, when English football began its slow-shuffle towards showing one live game a week, the Guardian’s venerable correspondent David Lacey warned of the potential consequences. In a column titled “The death threat of live television”, Lacey predicted: “Matches shown on the small screen, warts and all, far from stimulating interest, would be more likely to have the opposite effect,” and suggested: “A televised match would become the complete alternative to paying to watch football and more fans than ever would have reason to stay away.”
Lacey was far from alone. Years before the dawn of the Premier League Brian Clough thought too much live TV would kill football. And, indeed, as far back as 1931 the BBC stopped radio broadcasts of Football League games because of fears they were damaging attendances.
The logic appeared sound enough. Yet when it comes to live football on TV the horse has not merely bolted but is doing cartwheels across multiple continents while sticking up one finger at the doubters. This week an astonishing 87 games will be legally shown or streamed live in Britain – a number that would be higher still if Eleven Sports had not temporarily stopped broadcasting European football games during the 3pm Saturday blackout.
Few expect the blackout, that oasis between 2.45pm and 5pm every Saturday where no live football is allowed to be shown, to stand up to legal scrutiny. Indeed the direction of travel is for viewers to one day be able to watch every game, home and away, without running the gauntlet of dozens of pop-ups on a dodgy internet site. That might sound tremendous for fans, but the Premier League has always been wary – understandably fearing it would lead to a drop in attendances, a decline in atmosphere and less money the next time it hawked its product to broadcasters.
Less discussed are the effects on smaller clubs lower down the English league food chain if there is a broadcasting free-for-all. But compelling new research from three academics – Babatunde Buraimo of the University of Liverpool, and Jake Owen and Rob Simmons of Lancaster University – does not paint a rosy picture.
The academics trawled through 27,000 Football League matches between 2000 and 2018 to answer a simple question: what happens to attendances at Championship, League One and League Two matches when TV is showing a midweek Premier League or Champions League match at the same time?
After controlling for multiple factors, such as teams’ league position at the time of the match and the travelling distance for away fans, they showed that attendances fell across the lower leagues, and particularly below the Championship, when Champions League games were being played. Naturally that varied per season and per league, with League Two bearing the brunt of the fall.
You might think since European football went off terrestrial TV things may have improved. That, however, isn’t the case. Since BT began exclusive coverage of the Champions League, gates for League Two in midweek games have been on average 16% lower than would be expected when European games are played, while for League One it has been 10-15% depending on the club. In the Championship the effect is smaller – 2%-4% – but that is still a painful jolt to any balance sheet.
Incidentally, the effect when live Premier League matches are shown on Tuesday and Wednesday nights is far smaller – 2%-3% – possibly because the most attractive top-flight games tend to be shown on Saturday lunchtimes or Sunday afternoons.
Another potential worry for lower-league clubs is that midweek Championship games are now being shown on the red button, while League One and Two matches are streamed on the EFL’s iFollow service – further increasing the possibility that some fans may stay on their sofa. It is early days, but when the authors compared attendances across 10 Championship, League One and League Two games played on 8 September, for which there were corresponding fixtures in the 2017-18 season, they discovered an average drop of 3.5%.
It would be unwise to infer too much into a small sample given there are many confounding factors, such as timing of games and form and status of the teams involved which would vary between seasons. Yet it is not hard to discern where the winds are blowing. We know that Champions League games affect the gates of lower-league clubs. So, probably, does streaming matches. Lifting the blackout would be another blow. And some clubs’ finances are so parlous it could make insolvency a more likely prospect.
Which is why the academics suggest it might be time to reappraise the “solidarity payments” paid by the Premier League – which are made in recognition of a need to preserve a financially viable professional league structure of 92 teams – to give more help to smaller clubs.
In effect it would be an added form of compensation for the negative consequences inflicted on League One and League Two clubs by Premier League sides playing in the Champions League at the same time as them.As Buraimo points out: “Our research shows the degree of suffering from high-end football. If football is truly a sport where solidarity and the grass roots matters then increasing the level of subsidy further down the pyramid is quite affordable.”
Cynics will say it is asking too much for bigger clubs to dip deeper into their pockets. Altruism is not exactly their forte, after all. But if the broadcasting market does turn into a massive free-for-all, and more fans stay away from lower league stadiums, something will need to be done. Otherwise Lacey’s gloomy prediction could yet come true.
The Guardian Sport
