View: West Brom fans are getting a terrible deal in the Premier League
It is fair to say the Premier League’s announcement that matches not shown on TV would be available for a £14.95 fee has not gone down well.
With the COVID-19 pandemic preventing fans from attending matches and the economic situation impacting the money supporters have to spend, the decision appears tone deaf to the situation facing normal people.
However, what makes the situation even worse, is that the smaller clubs are being hit even harder. Since pay-per-view was introduced, West Brom fans have been asked to pay £59.80 to watch their team. And that is on top of the Sky Sports, BT Sport and Amazon Prime subscriptions that are required to watch Premier League football.
That total means that alongside Aston Villa, Baggies fans have been asked to pay more than the fans of any other Premier League team so far this season. Meanwhile, Manchester City and Everton have yet to have a game behind the paywall.
This decision is not only unfair on the fans, but has also acted to further re-enforce the inequalities that exist within the Premier League and football in general. None of the traditional top six sides have had more than two matches on pay-per-view, while last season’s top four – Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United – have had fewer games on pay-per-view combined than West Brom. And while these numbers are shocking now, this is trend that is likely to continue.
As revealed by talkSPORT, there have been discussions about reducing the cost from £14.95 to £9.95, but the damage has already been done. Furthermore, £9.95 remains a prohibitive cost for many fans.
During the summer, Premier League clubs spent £1.26 billion in transfer fees. According to talkSPORT, the bulk of that was done by the likes of Chelsea (£222 million), Manchester City (£138.6 million), Leeds United (£96.4 million) Manchester United (£87 million), Everton (£87 million), Aston Villa (£81 million), Arsenal (£77.7 million) and Liverpool (£76.7 million).
However, it appears that the Premier League would rather see the fans of smaller clubs front up the funds to help them manage there way through the current economic climate.
In other West Brom news, View: Leading the line for xA – the Baggies have a secret attacking weapon