TV and Football: Channels of Income

(Photograph: Gareth Copley/PA Archive/Press Association)

The early 1990s saw the advent of widespread televised football. The Premier League was formed and with it came the opportunity for companies to hit a whole new captive audience. It also allowed top-flight clubs the chance to begin generating some serious revenue.

The first ever TV rights deal brought £191.5million worth of advertising money to the newly formed league in 1992. Five years later and a new deal signed, that figure rose to £670million. A fairly pedestrian figure when compared to the mammoth deal struck with Sky Sports and BT Sport a few of weeks ago.

The new deal will run between 2016 and 2019, with the final figure somewhere in the region of £5.136billion. How this affects the clubs yearly figures will be of great interest to the footballing world. Last season, the top four teams each took over £95million in TV money. This equates to almost a third of their total revenue for the season, highlighting exactly why the importance of TV deals cannot be underestimated.

This is at the very top of the professional game, so what happens at the lower end? Surely fans that aren’t able to travel up and down the country each week would like the opportunity to see their club play from the comfort of their sofas?

What about us?

When comparing the Premier League’s latest TV package with the BT Sports deal to cover the National Conference in 2014 (£300,000), the latter provides more of a token payday. Home teams received £7,000 and the visitors £1,000. For some clubs in the Conference, that money cannot be baulked at, particularly those which aren’t full-time.

If you consider that a large percentage of clubs attract average gates of around 2,000 fans for home games, multiplied by the cost of a day out at a game for fans, match day income will seldom exceed £50,000. There are of course the exceptions to that rule when we consider the larger clubs, but £7,000 can be quite a chunk out of the weekly wage bill.

So with the growth of the non-league as a prospect for broadcasting deals, will the size and value begin to make a difference? The main point to note here would be that the league relies on getting fans through the turnstiles in order to generate cash.

Realistically, having the games available on the television (sometimes for free if the viewers are current customers of the provider – like with BT, for example) the likelihood that they will opt instead to pay to go to games would be reduced more and more.

The optimist amongst most directors of non-league clubs would probably like to think that fans want to support their side in the flesh, if not home and away, then most certainly the former. The reason for this is two-fold: to simply be at a football match for all of its beauty, and to play their part in assisting the club financially.

Where does it all go?

Of course, the only problem that the big clubs have is how to spend the money they make from TV deals. As looked at above, the latest deal will see each clubs approach, if not achieve, earnings from broadcasters of well over £100million per season. That’s about one Gareth Bale and a couple of Xabi Alonso’s.

Premier League chief Richard Scudamore said that the latest deal would enable the division to redistribute the astronomical funds “right down through to grass-roots football". With the highest earning players in the league getting over £300,000 a week, it is hard to see where the value will be added at the lowest levels.

"The stars that grace the fields of football in the Premier League are world stars,” he told the BBC. “It's a world market, and I don't set that market rate. It's set by the entire world market, and we, and the fans, want the best talent to come and play in the Premier League."

The last point is one which is hard to argue with. The real test will be whether fans will continue to pay the price for increased TV coverage and advertisers wanting to exploit it. In the non-league, this doesn’t really become food for thought, because of the gigantic gap between it and the top flight.