How did English Football get so popular?

“In 1992, Sky Sports bought Premier League TV rights for just over £302m, 21 years later at the start of the 2013/14 season, Sky have once again recently renewed it’s Premier League football’s TV rights package for £3billion. 

Which is a significant increase since it’s inception. Sky television in it’s inception year didn’t even have a sports channel, and 20 years on we’ve seen 4 channels added including 4 HD sports channels and a pay per view football channel called Prem Plus which was around from 2001 till 2007 which screened exclusive Premier League football matches to subscription holders of that channel, which was publically criticised by sections football fans. 

Another reason that English football has benefited so much from Sky’s television rights purchase is because football league matches until 1992 were available on free to air television such as the BBC, “which was funded by the tax payers money which more technically is referred to TV licensing fees”, so really didn’t have the budget to go out and air as many football matches as Sky do now. therefore when the hundreds of millions that were put into the Premier League clubs budget helped pay the bigger wages and transfer fees which later in this entry will thoroughly look into in a in depth manner to find out what benefits this really provided and what consequence the rest of English football are paying for the big teams increase.

Sky TV has changed the social word of football fans a lot, pre 1992 before Sky football came in, football fans would have mostly scratched their head at the possibility of going to a pub to watch a football match, the big TV screens were virtually unheard off and back when people were slightly tentative about the prospect of splashing out a lot of money at the time on a satellite dish. 

One of the problems many football fans and media alike have touched upon is the fact how Sky is socially destroying the game for the supporters due to how successful they’ve actually become, Sky have become ‘out of touch’ with the average football fan.

 

As touched upon in the Guardian article ‘The game that ate itself’ tells us how a story of a die-hard Manchester City supporter had been going to every fixture home and away for over 5 years until recently being priced out due to the rise in ticket prices. A ticket to see his team play Birmingham had risen in 1 year from £17 to £35, what was the difference? Birmingham had been promoted to the top division of English football. Due to the demand and interest Sky has brought to English football, it’s only natural for clubs to do the same and put prices up even more and take advantage of the demand. The over achievement of Sky since 1992’s rights purchase of English football has led to pricing out the average fan out of games.