A growing number of fans are watching games on TV rather than attending them.GETTY IMAGES
The balance between showing live football matches on TV and protecting the interests of the wider game "has always been precarious," but there are "signs that the tipping point has already been reached" in favor of the small screen, according to Martyn Ziegler of the LONDON TIMES. The "momentum for a change to the old rules, for a totally free-market system to be established that fully embraces the inexorable march of the digital revolution, appears unstoppable." For better or worse, the days when fans cannot tune in to any club's matches on TV, computer or a mobile device "appear numbered." The evidence of this "sea change" in English football is in "plain sight:" the growth of televised live club football on demand; strong evidence that crowd numbers are dropping as fans "choose to watch from their armchair instead;" and a "threat to the old establishment order when there was no live football on TV on Saturday afternoons." The FA "may have won the first skirmish in the battle to protect the Saturday 3pm TV blackout," but it now "looks certain" that streaming provider Eleven Sports will mount a legal challenge to overturn that rule and be permitted to show top-flight Spanish and Italian matches during that window. Across Europe, there is "bemusement" that viewers in Britain are subjected to such restrictive practices while in countries such as Germany and Spain, every top-flight match is accessible. That feeling is "shared among some senior figures among those broadcasters" who have the rights to the Premier League, who feel that the easy access of pirate streams "has not been tackled adequately" (LONDON TIMES, 10/20).
