Finance expert highlights West Brom impact if 3pm blackouts scrapped
We’re delighted to welcome football finance expert Dr Daniel Plumley as our exclusive columnist. Each week he’ll be giving his views on the biggest talking points at West Brom...
The scrapping of the age-old 3pm blackouts in the Championship would be beneficial to clubs like West Brom in England’s second tier.
That’s according to Dr Dan Plumley who claims that clubs of the Baggies’ stature will not be affected by a dip in stadium attendances.
He claims that they’ve got a large fanbase and the supporters who cannot travel for away games will get the luxury of watching the matches for a price.
The Sheffield Hallam University expert also proposes the introduction of a new streaming service in order to facilitate this proposed change.
Speaking exclusively to West Brom News, he said:
“I would personally argue that it would leave them in a better position.
“The reason behind it is that you’ll still get your hardcore fans going into stadiums so the attendance will still be protected for clubs of West Brom’s tier.
“If you imagine a streaming system where clubs can sell individual match passes to the fans which are capped and governed by the teams themselves you can easily see how the bigger teams will benefit because in a big way, they’ve got the bigger fanbases.
“The smaller clubs will be affected so they will have to be compensated in this regard to make it workable and viable in the long term.
“But I think that this system can work and the flexibility it gives is really good.
“We are a bit archaic about this 3pm blackout. The world’s changed a little bit and this protection of attendances, I’m not too sure, would be a massive issue but we won’t know until we’ve tried it.“
This comes after the EFL held talks in June 2022 to discuss the broadcasting strategy of the future which could see the blackouts becoming a thing of the past. [iNews]
Clubs were also shown presentations of such a change ahead of the TV deal with Sky ending in the summer of 2024.
In other West Brom news, the Baggies are set to battle Manchester United to sign an exit-bound Premier League goalkeeper this summer.
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