iFollow 2021/22

If they did that then almost certainly the 3PM TV blackout from PL clubs would cease as the whole argument for why the EFL needs that goes out of the window (It, after all, exists to protect the important income generated from casual fans. That would leave most if not all clubs out of pocket as fans of PL clubs who attend lower league matches as they can't get a ticket for their actual team or just the casual fans who don't really have a team but want to watch some football could now just watch 3PM TV game rather than the lower league team

 

You are looking at it as 'They would get more money from me' not 'Will they get more money across the board'. The EFL is adamant that getting the casual fans in the stadium which they claim there is a significant amount is worth it.

When you consider that at least in 2017 the cheapest lowest band ticket in League 2 was £14.50 and the cheapest highest band ticket was £20 then you can see they make more from it plus then the additional income streams (Most expensive were £20 for low band and £29 high band)

Also the way distribution of iFollow income is done its not even a great deal across the board for clubs which makes it worse. They would prefer casual fans attending taking up spare seats, maybe buying a programme, a drink, a pie etc rather than going 'Well I could go and watch Bradford city in the rain or I can stay in and watch Man Utd or Liverpool on the TV'

 

Most casual fans are fans who support top-level clubs and either can't get to their match as they can't get a ticket (be it because they sell out every week or because they are away) so end up at a local game that Saturday at 3 pm.

If their club was on TV they aren't going to League 1, League 2 or lower. In fact many of them wont even go even if they don't support a big side but they can watch a higher quality game in high quality on TV.

And you say many thousands. For the Salford game, you sold 1645 passes. That was the most you have sold all season and you sell more for away games as the ST holders have to buy away games. Those ST holders aren't buying iFollow as they will be in the stadium and some of those 1645 won't buy iFollow as they will go to the away game in person.

Home matches are averaging around 600 sales a game. With sales of iFollow only being worth £8.34 and matchday tickets being £25 they only need 200 casual fans to make the same amount on match day as they do on iFollow

 

Casual fans don't decide they want to watch City though, they watch because its the best option right then for their football fix. For example, I'm a Man Utd fan, lived in the Manchester Region from about 2 to 7 before my dad's job moved him down south. It wasn't viable for me to go and watch Man Utd play so if I wanted to watch football on a Saturday afternoon my choice was to go and watch Farnborough Town or if they were playing away hope that Aldershot Town were at home. With Farnborough being a commuter town and Aldershot being an Army town alot of my friends were in the same boat where they supported clubs that were significant distances away, I had friends who supported Forest, Newcastle, Rangers amongst others so we would go and watch Farnborough or Aldershot most Saturday. We weren't fans of the club, if we could have watched our team on TV we certainly would have, given the chance to watch a top-level game on TV we probably would have taken it as well because at that level its not even great football but it was all we had. And that's the thing with Casual fans, they aren't choosing to watch a game because they want to watch that team, they choose to watch that team because they don't have a free choice so pick the best option on a variety of factors. You throw 3PM PL games into the mix (plus you would have to allow foreign games that currently can't be shown) and you have way more factors pushing people away from going to games unless they are an actual fan

 

The figures suggest that this isn't. You have around 600 per home game paying for iFollow access. I would imagine a fair few of those are people who choose not to take their season ticket up because the chances of seeing enough live games to make it value for money was (and still is) fairly small. Its cheaper to just pay £10 for every home match, especially if you usually buy multiple season tickets for family

 

Interesting to see that some (all?) Saturday 3pm matches on the opening day of the SPFL season are being broadcast live across all 4 divisions.

Whilst I've seen lots of suggestions that iFollow is not going to be available in the UK on Saturdays, I've yet to see absolute confirmation that it is not going to available and it is going to be interesting if Scottish matches are going to be available across the UK.