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Premier League viewing figures down 10%

To be fair, it’s far more competitive nowadays.

The days of the “big 4” were far worse where it was literally just seeing if Tottenham could break in but every year was Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal in the Champions League.
It not competitive at all, it's one of the dullest leagues in the world.
 

Just get bored out of my brains watching premier league games now. No surprise the viewing figures are down. There’s no intensity, atmosphere is shite at most games, everybody trying to play out from the back, VAR is shit and players are scared to take players on. Defence and goalkeeper passing it amongst themselves for about 5 minutes and midfielders more bothered about possessions stats. Teams don’t even play proper strikers anymore.
 
You need to look outside your bubble and even the UK's bubble as the Premier League is a global brand.



It's clear some don't know just don't realise how big the Premier League is globally as it's not all about the UK viewers. There's more money coming in from global tv rights than the domestic rights as this changed in the last deal 2022-25 and it's grown even more in the latest deal as global growth continues.

It may be shit to some people in the UK but not to those abroad. It's huge and social media shows that and part of the reason why it's been able to grow as people can now interact globally. There's millions of viewers globally and they will be seeing all the sponsors/ads etc and some of those will be spending money generating money for the club they 'follow'. The good thing is that we'll be getting new armchair fans next season so this will mean a slight increase in commercial revenue and all the other stuff that comes with being in the Premier League.


Domestic and international popularity

Stadiums were a record-equalling 98.8 per cent full at Premier League matches in 2024/25, matching the high set in 2023/24.

Some 33.9m in the UK have watched live matches and the BBC’s Match of the Day highlights, equivalent to 55 per cent of the total UK TV audience.

The Premier League has become one of the UK’s biggest and most popular global exports. It is broadcast to 189 countries (out of 193 UN member states), with 900m homes across the world able to watch Premier League football.

Some 1.87bn people follow the Premier League worldwide, interacting at least weekly through the media. Thirty-four per cent of Premier League followers have become interested in the past four years.



Some say it's not competitive and this season it hasn't been as competitive as most. Though out of the football leagues in the world it's probably still got the most competition going on within it from top to bottom most seasons and has the biggest collection of top players in it. There's a 2nd link below that mentions the PL will be bringing production in-house so that means they can offer Netflix type subscription, though not in the UK and they may test the waters first.


The global reach of the Premier League continues to grow, with UEFA reporting a 23% increase in international broadcasting deals starting in the 2025/26 season. However, domestically, the market remains flat and below its peak from the 2017/18 season. The League also maintains the most equitable revenue distribution model among Europe’s top leagues.

Domestic Market

Over the past six seasons, the domestic market has seen little growth, and while the latest deal was promoted as the largest in Premier League history, it spans four years, resulting in a year-on-year increase of only 2.3% compared to the current cycle. Additionally, this new cycle includes 270 live games, up from the 200 live games in the previous cycle, which effectively results in a decrease in the value per live game.

And at £1.67 billion per year, the domestic deal is still below its peak of £1.72 billion from the 2016/17 to 2018/19 cycle.



The Premier League meeting produced another major media story as the competition announced that its clubs have unanimously agreed to bring its broadcast operations work in-house from 2026/27, which affords the league the option of launching a so-called ‘Premflix’ direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform in future should it wish to go down that route in some territories.

The decision will mean the end of the Premier League’s long-running partnership with IMG, which has been producing and distributing content from the competition since 2004 through Premier League Productions (PLP).
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Ah aye, im not saying it’s not growing. I just think it’s reached its peak in England and if anything, it’ll start dropping off.
 
A mix of there been too much on and the football has come boring in the whole, it doesn’t help when the stadiums are like theatres having priced the working fan out of it, in the past I would watch games purely as it would be a good atmosphere , and that feeds into the players too so generally a better game. Bring back unallocated standing to try and get back to the culture we all loved
 
Not Sky high prices if you pardon the pun

They’ve always said there going after the providers more than those who watch them on the Firestick
Been trying for years. They've had the odd highly publicised win once a year or so but that is due to the IPTV provider being careless. Eg advertising fire sticks with PL app openly.
The covert ones have been going over 10 years now.
Sky and BT/TNT try blocking the feeds. Occasionally they succeed. But the following day (usually the same day) the IPTV providers have circumvented the block.
That's what I have been told. I would never use IPTV as it's illegal and sky/tnt pay good money to buy the PL rights.
It's downright dishonest to cheat them regardless of the extortionate monthly amount they charge
 
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A mix of there been too much on and the football has come boring in the whole, it doesn’t help when the stadiums are like theatres having priced the working fan out of it, in the past I would watch games purely as it would be a good atmosphere , and that feeds into the players too so generally a better game. Bring back unallocated standing to try and get back to the culture we all loved
Will be interesting to see/hear the Everton atmosphere now they've left Goodison.

I'd imagine it'll be rocking for a couple of years at least, just as the SOL was in the beginning.
 
£50 a year for a dodgy stick or £70 per month for sky ?? Not hard is it.... I've got sky but never pay full price for it.

Those who have a dodgy stick won't fork out for sky though if they shut iptv down. The only way forward is the supposed premier league ran official iptv for day £10-20 per month.
This! Official viewing may be down 10% but IPTV use will no doubt be increasing so the actual numbers of those watching the PL in the UK by whatever means won't have dropped 10%. They'll eventually learn that a subscription direct would be better and it's already been voted to bring production in house so that this could be a possible option and in time they bump off Sky/TNT etc. I knew nowt about this below but it's a bit naive to think the PL interest is dropping off. I knew it was massive globally and all I did was google a few things to find the various links. It's the music napster thing coming to a tipping point, that's all. The sales of music dropped yet music demand didn't drop and look at it now they've made it more affordable to all.

The Premier League meeting produced another major media story as the competition announced that its clubs have unanimously agreed to bring its broadcast operations work in-house from 2026/27, which affords the league the option of launching a so-called ‘Premflix’ direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform in future should it wish to go down that route in some territories.


Ah aye, im not saying it’s not growing. I just think it’s reached its peak in England and if anything, it’ll start dropping off.
Is it? It may have dropped off 10% but as above the IPTV use is growing. Nobody knows how big it is but this was just one case of no doubt many more who supply it. It's obvious most on this forum won't have much of an interest in it given the time we've been out of it. Now we're back in it then some will take more interest in it just like they took interest in the Championship.


An illegal IPTV streaming operation that made £2,500,000,000 a year has been bust wide open after it was found to be supplying dodgy box links to more than 22 million households in the United Kingdom and Europe.



Our data shows that football was comfortably top of the list: 73% of the Britons who watched an illegal broadcast in the past six months watched it. Every other sport on the list was further behind by some distance: the runner-up, boxing, was only watched by 24% of people viewing pirated broadcasts, with MMA coming in third (15%).
 
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No doubt. They know it's a problem and stuff like losing 10% of their customer base will only mean they ramp up their efforts to put a stop to it.

if people will pay money for dodgy footy, they wont stop it. having newspapers/websites put scare storys on twitter etc is not working
 
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Why aye pee tea vee is advertised all owa now, people even daft enough to offer it publicly on Facebook with their real name tied to it.
 
The football is generally very boring, and the whole VAR rubbish doesn't help
Most of football is boring though isn't it? If you watched every match in La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga etc you'd find the same thing a lot of boring games. Yet there are games that turn out to be class to watch and the same happens in the Champions League, the playoffs and various cups etc with shit games but then there's ones that are a great watch.

You can go watch a Sunday League game and one time it will be more entertaining that a PL game. Yet another week it could be that shite it could have you questioning your sanity of standing in pissy rain in cold weather watching it.
 
It can be as simple as the biggest drawer of viewership being utter shite and all the plastic manchester united fans dont want to tune in hoping to squeeze a 1-1 draw out of Wolves. Won't be the full 10% but certainly a factor
 
It was crap season, the title and the relegation battle were basically over half way through.
This is true. I was bored of it quickly, would have been far better if Arsenal and City had been consistent and challenged.

The race for CL spots was interesting towards the end though but nothing beats a close title race.
 
if people will pay money for dodgy footy, they wont stop it. having newspapers/websites put scare storys on twitter etc is not working
It’s the huge Royce gap that’s created that black market, there will be people who still go for the dodgy streams but if the price of sky etc was reasonable loads would buy it
 
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