THE PRICE OF FOOTBALL

Before you read my ramblings, please check out my Just Giving link.

Football in England and for that matter quite a lot of the rest of the world is getting out of hand and quite frankly it's beginning to make me sick.

From the start of next season the TV deal from SKY, with a little help from BT, will be worth a smidge over £3bn - globally this gets up to £5bn. This seems insane, but I suspect it is anything but. Between them Sky & BT will show 154 games, which works out at £6.5m a pop. 

But you can bet that it's worth it. Advertising and well lets face it, would anyone really have Sky if they didn't have the football on. It's what their entire business model was built upon.

This however isn't my point... according to Malcolm Clark of the Football Supporters Federation.

"The new media rights deal for the Premier League, even before the foreign rights deal is announced, means they could knock around £30 off each single ticket next season and still have as much money as they have now."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19987630

Now I did the back of an envelope sums on this and this is actually about right.

Astonishingly it works out that Sky / ESPN currently pay about £44 per person who actually attends Premier League games. This is every game, whether it's on TV or not. 

When the £3bn deal kicks in, this will go up to £75 - so actually more than it costs to go in the away end at Arsenal.

It's worth noting that the linesmen at the recent Arsenal v Man City game reminded the City players that their fans had paid £62 a ticket and suggested it might be an idea to make the effort and go over to them. The Premier Leagues reaction to this was to drop him from the next game he was due to officiate.

If that doesn't tell you all that is wrong with the game these days, I don't know what does.

When you're paying nearly £50 a ticket these days you begin to wonder if it's worth it. This is brought into focus by the way that Liverpool distribute their tickets these days - which in fairness is better than the old system of just having to hammer the phones and hope your boss thought you were just being persistent with some unlikely work-related activity.

But paying £30 just for the right to be able to buy tickets and then being asked to get all the tickets you want up to December in July - a lot of money depending on how many games obviously - and then being asked to get the tickets for the rest of the season quite handily just before Christmas. You begin to realise just how much money you're spending.

Unnecessary picture of Mrs Sneijder

And when the money from the new deal does kick in, where exactly do you think the money will go?

Well that's anybodies guess - given Liverpool's recent track record quite a chunk of it might go to Newcastle - or possibly to Wesley Sneijder for his missus* to spend on whatever she spends it on I suppose, but one thing is pretty certain - It won't be £20 a ticket in the Kop for League games next season.

* I realise that Mr Sneijder has since signed for Galatasaray, but that's not a sufficient reason not to still have an unnecessary picture of Mrs Sneijder  sat there in her pants.