General 3pm "blackout" Yes, No or Maybe?

Saturday 3pm "blackout" yes, no or maybe

  • Yes

    Votes: 21 30.0%
  • No

    Votes: 37 52.9%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 12 17.1%

  • Total voters
    70
  • Poll closed .
That's only because your local team has never been in your living room and all the kids only got to see was the Premier League
The idea that kids watch Man Utd because they can't watch Oxford sounds like satire.
 
Given that the likes of Liverpool and Man Utd will almost certainly benefit from being able to roll this out to their fans, good luck getting them to rein it back in if us and Accrington Stanley don't like it.
fans of those clubs can watch every game their team plays now though
 
fans of those clubs can watch every game their team plays now though
They can, but not all do. I'm not settling my family down to watch a dodgy stream on the laptop hooked up to the TV any time soon.

If they didn't, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. Again, the only reason this is a talking point now is because Man Utd fans are missing the Ronaldo return on Sky.
 
is that not the whole point though? if you pay a subscription to Sky Bt or Amazon They decide what you can watch and when. Every Premier League game today whether on tv or not is easily obtained if you so desire. If every game across the leagues was a 3pm kick off and "all" available to view people would decide what they would watch and it would be their club they chose. People who go to games would still go and where the odd few may not the loss would be non existent as thousands would be paying to view.

In the past there wee numerous occasions when Oxford were playing and there was an England game or champions League on tv and i doubt anyone who was going to the game remained at home. if the same happened now and there was a choice of games across the board via tv or stream fans of Oxford and their opponents who could not attend would pay to watch their team.
No one is offering this though. The Premier League will not be happy to limit themselves to 90 minutes of eyeballs a week, they want to be an option all the time. This would allow them to cover off the prime Saturday afternoon slot quite nicely and mean anyone who wants to support Man Utd from afar literally never has to miss a game.
 
They can, but not all do. I'm not settling my family down to watch a dodgy stream on the laptop hooked up to the TV any time soon.

If they didn't, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. Again, the only reason this is a talking point now is because Man Utd fans are missing the Ronaldo return on Sky.
things have moved on from dodgy streams and there are other means
 
Personally I think the big sports broadcasters are getting increasingly concerned that the younger generation are refusing to pay their ridiculous prices too. I'm in my mid 20s, and I could not name a single person I know +/- 5 years in age that pays for Sky or BT Sports. What they ALL have is Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+. You can get all three of those for less than the cost of the basic Sky Sports package, and the content is significantly more vast and better value for money. If they allow streaming of games on iFollow then the big TV companies will no doubt lose significant funds especially from the Premier League. But as it is the broadcasters have a monopoly over our sport, forcing people to pay their subscriptions to get a bit of football. Make no mistake the blackout protects that monopoly far more than it protects the clubs - and the lack of easy access to local clubs for a fair price is what's killing off the young fanbases more than being able to stream your local teams games would.
 
To give mu usual US perspective (because I am half-American now after all).....

.....up until 2014, the NFL had a policy that if a team hadn't sold 85% of tickets for a home game by 72 hours before the kickoff, the game got blacked out on local TV.
The logic was that ticket sales were such an important part of NFL team's revenues, and the product was so much better when the stadia were full, that they didn't want people sitting around at home watching the games if the stadium was half-empty.

The rule eventually got binned, in large part because ticket sales ceased to be quite such an important part of NFL team's revenues and it was financially more important for them to get the best TV deals possible (so exactly the same situation that the Premier League is in today).

But something like it could work for the football league?
If, say, Oxford have sold 6,000 tickets (or whatever % of attendance works for clubs' bottom lines) to home fans by Thursday night, the game is available for purchase to anyone on iFollow. If noone is buying tickets, then the blackout comes into effect.

Would prevent you from selling season passes, because noone would buy them if they didn't know how many games they were going to get to watch*, but otherwise I think it could strike a balance.


(*I say noone, but us overseas iFollow subscribers all get season passes, and then randomly find that games like the Wombles aren't going to be shown because the EFL has somehow sold the game to other overseas broadcasters........but then we're all desperate for an OUFC fix and don't have any other options to get it, so they know they can screw us over without losing our custom!)
 
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