The number of viewers watching live Premier League matches on Sky during the first half of this season is down 12% on the previous year, latest figures have revealed, according to Martyn Ziegler of the LONDON TIMES. The average number of viewers for a match "kicking off" at 4pm on a Sunday was 1.08 million, down from 1.22 million last year. That is an improvement on the "alarming" 19% dip that had been registered in October, but is nevertheless a "cause for concern" as the chairs of the top-flight clubs prepare to gather for a shareholders' meeting next week. But do the numbers really mean that people are "losing their appetite" for watching Premier League football on TV? And, if so, are we nearing the end of the "impressive growth in the value of domestic TV rights for the league," which has hit £5.14B ($6.42B)? The "probable answer" to the first question is that "the figures reflect a change in society's habits but do not tell the whole story." What "appears clear is that the same number of people, or even more, are watching live football at times, but perhaps not as often as before" because of the choice of on-demand programs available on platforms such as Netflix. A "rising number of people also prefer to watch football on tablets or smartphones," and they are not picked up by the "increasingly narrow" Broadcasters' Audience Research Board ratings. The Premier League's latest research also shows that the number of individuals, or "unique viewers," in the U.K. who have watched a broadcast of live top-flight football this season has actually increased by 2.4%, from 38 million to 38.9 million. Sky's "reach" -- the number of people who watch live football at some point -- is also understood to have gone up, from 10.4 million to 11.9 million. A Premier League spokesperson said, "Premier League football has never been more popular. Grounds are full to record capacity and more people are watching on TV, with unique viewing figures up 2.4 percent." The Premier League acknowledges that "one of the greatest challenges it faces is piracy." Research firm Enders Analysis Dir of TV Research Toby Syfret said, "The big issue for me is not audiences going down, it's the piracy. That's the more serious problem" (LONDON TIMES, 2/3).
STADIUM STREAM: In London, Rebecca Clancy reported a "new phenomenon has sprung up at high-profile matches in recent months" -- that of fans transmitting games live from the stadium via their smartphones on the Twitter-owned Periscope platform. One Man City fan "covered the entire FA Cup match away to Crystal Palace" on Jan. 28 via Periscope and pulled in an "astonishing" 139,300 viewers. Josh Chambers, 23, who works for Surrey Council, said, "I mainly did it for my dad because he couldn't make it to the game so I thought I would try Periscope and see how it worked as the game was televised." The Premier League said that it "has not seen any similar figures for a Periscope post from its games, and will take action against any such transmissions" (LONDON TIMES, 2/3).
