Most liked posts in thread: EFL TV Rights Deal 24/25 to 28/29 - Goodbye iFollow

From next season, another deal is in place for the EFL, having renewed it's international streaming rights. Pitch International has the rights to the EFL games to be broadcast overseas, with its new deal to include streaming of 38 L1 & L2 matches per season. As it's US based, the article event hints that they are going to target Wrexhams popularity. But there could be a chance we are selected for some international streaming games in future. This deal seems like it is going to carry on the iFollow service for overseas fans.

EFL agrees innovative new international TV rights deals - The English Football League

EFL ANNOUNCES RECORD INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST RIGHTS REVENUE - Sport Industry Group

As well as this, Stoke City this week leaked some early info mistakenly about next seasons new Sky Sports EFL deal. It seems like it was announced an eternity ago, but from next season there is way more EFL football on TV. Sky will be showing 328 Sky Bet Championship matches, 248 Sky Bet League One matches & 248 Sky Bet League Two matches over the season as well as the usual play offs. Stoke City jumped the gun in a deleted post and announced that for Championship clubs, the agreement is at least 2 home and 2 away patches per season will be selected for main TV. I'm guessing from the numbers, the L1 & L2 agreement may well be that all clubs will be shown at least 3 times per season?

I'm guessing the idea at the moment around how Sky can show so many matches, it will be similar to mid-week Championship fixtures? When there's a full championship Tuesday schedule, all 12 games are on Sky at once, with one on the main channel and the rest via red-button. If they do that for the 10ish midweek games a season, 12 games a round, that will cover about half of it with the rest being a handful a weekend. Complete guess.

 

Not so great for fans when games get moved to a Friday or Monday night. Also clubs will be losing out on iFollow money from midweek and others rounds of fixtures where they can show games in iFollow domestically

 

He's put me on ignore after working him out. Since I pointed him out as being that person he has put his twitter on protect, strange thing to happen or the a 1 in a 1,000,000 coincidence.

Odd behaviour.

 

Hope they continue to employ Andy Kiwomya.

I quite like the rustic approach of ifollow, rather than the slicker sky sports offer.

 

The Athletic printed it a few weeks back in a Wrexham article about the differences they'll face financially after promotion. They were talking about the change in TV revenue going from being on BT every week to being on ifollow for about 8 games a season.

It said we made the most this past season in L2 from ifollow at just under £300K (If I remember rightly) for the season. However this was a one off season for all teams as ifollow had every game broadcast from mid November until after the Jan new years games, whilst the world cup break was on. So this season everyone did well from ifollow but those aren't sustainable numbers as no team will have as many games as this season in broadcast going forward under ifollow.

 

i presume the sky money is guaranteed , i follow is unknown. Have a poor season and paying numbers would be down.
How many would have paid for Crewe , if we were mid table and the game had nothing on it?

 

From what I understand club streaming will remain for international viewers with the only change being Pitch International have bought some exclusive rights to see around the world and them matches won't be available on the club streaming platform. Sky's deal in effect buys the rights to domestic iFollow. The camera used for iFollow is the main camera for EFL & club highlights and for clubs to analyse matches so that will remain.

 

The EFL and Sky have announced they will be launching SkySports+ which will host the EFL content. If you've already got Sky Sports then there's no extra cost but if you don't you'll have to either sign up for Sky Sports or buy a NOWTV day or month pass. Currently a day pass is £14.99 so quite a big rise on the current £10 a game unless you want to watch their other content as well, a monthly pass is currently £34.99 per month so if we are on Sky 4 times in a month then it's better value than ifollow. At least with the commitment for the TV games for the first half of the season to be announced before the season starts you can plan what you want to do.
https://www.efl.com/news/2024/may/08/introducing-sky-sports-/
https://www.sky.com/watch/sky-sports-efl

This will be why Sky have paid so much for these rights as they know they'll get a lot back through subscriptions.

 

Is this definitely that twitter poster? Made the hashtag unreadable if so? Shouldn't be anywhere near this forum if it is.

 

No they won't as it starts the season after

 

5,000 is very high considering our highest in 20/21 was 3,000 and what was when you couldn't go to matches. A lot of people will watch on IPTV or have more than 1 person watching on 1 pass.

 

I’d agree, but I do side with the thought we’ll be relatively worse off going forward.
At the moment we’ll have far more ifollow income than rivals, whereas going forward (I assume), income will be evenly distributed.

 

The Club must have thought the deal was better for us as they voted for it. If we were going to be worse off then surely they would have voted against it?

 

Yeah I've noticed some of the "look at the Wrexham success fairytale" type articles out in the media are very selective about the things they print in relation to money. Some articles it's like they are trying their best to find a way of bringing up the success without mentioning the money it's taken to get them from mid-table to champions in 2 years.

 

So if iFollow is still available to supporters living abroad it should hopefully still be possible to watch via a VPN, as I've done this season for most of the away games that I haven't attended in person.

 

Just get a firestick pal, they’re virtually flawless and everyone you ask these days seems to have one

 

that could be that more people are using the service at that time if you are talking about watch football

 

Looks like we will be about £100k-£150k down on the new deal

 

It is the bit for the Americas where that company has the right to sell all the games which in theory could take the game off iFollow but it would depend if it only takes it off the country they sell it in.

biggest worry would be IF we got to play offs and they took them off as they have the rights to them