Interesting debate I’ve seen on Twitter.
Currently for away ticket gate receipts home team receive 95%, away team 5% commission. For games that can streamed in the UK, it’s 80% to the club who sell the stream and 20% to the EFL.
Burton v Ipswich on Tuesday, Ipswich sold out 1,600 away tickets (95% income to Burton) and 5,300+ UK based streams (0% income to Burton).
The Accrington chairman is arguing that the lion share of the stream income from Ipswich sales should go to the home club (Burton), or pooled with all stream income and split across the league (like the Sky contract money is).
What do you think is fair?
Comments
Only once that happened, did the Away team start get a percentage
https://www.castrust.org/2022/07/streaming-who-benefits/
The home club should really take the lion's share of income from televising a match. That's because every stream paid for may result in one more empty seat in the ground.
My solution would be that the home team gets a 95%/5% split of streaming revenue for as many "seats" as it takes to fill the ground. For example, if Charlton have 15,000 in the ground, that's 12,111 empty seats. Charlton should get a 95% share of the first 12,111 streams sold; after that it should be split 80% to the club that sells the stream, 20% to the EFL.
This current income split from ifollow just furthers what we already see in league 1 with a big split between the budgets of the big teams and the small. If they carry on, and with streaming only getting bigger and bigger, then the divide will grow and make the league less competitive. The EFL is so good because it’s so competitive and unpredictable so this should be protected at all costs rather than just letting the rich clubs get richer
No doubt everyone would argue what the percantages should be but something along the lines of 35% home, 15% away, 50% pot may be a starting point for negotiations.
You can argue that pooling is good for the game but I wonder if that’s actually the case or whether Andy Holt is just arguing for the good of his own football club.
Much like the nonsense salary cap that he was a big proponent of. The basic principle of it made sense, control crazy spending. But upon implementation it hugely benefitted clubs like Accrington at the expense of others.
If you have more overseas fans streaming, why shouldn’t you benefit from more of the streaming revenue?
If you have to pool all the income then how about pooling all the expense that comes with a matchday too, would Holt be keen on that? Highly unlikely as it would increase his costs massively if he had to share our expenses too but seems he only wants to share the income only.
There's also an argument that with a limited away capacity clubs are selling passes to fans that wouldn't otherwise have been able to attend like we've done before showing AFC Wimbledon and Millwall away in The Fans Bar before.
Holt has argued that it's not for the other team to sell but then it can also be argued back that he doesn't have 5k Ipswich fans to sell to.
Personally I would allow each team to be able to sell there own pass for the same game eg Accrington sell a streaming pass on there website for anyone who wishes to buy from them and they get to keep all that income while the away team can buy the same pass from there own website to which the away team keeps all that income. Therefore effectively selling to your own fans.
Well worth a read on Andy's timeline.
- a percentage to iFollow to fund the service
- home team streams keep everything
- away team streams - 95% home/5% away up to the point where stream + tickets sold equal the away ticket allocation. 50/50 split on anything over that, as it’s effectively money that wouldn’t have been made otherwise. It also stops away teams from pocketing cash by not selling tickets.
We know now which 12 clubs are going to have the biggest income. They are also going to have the biggest loses. So no one is getting rich are they? With 1 or 2 exceptions those 12 clubs will all finish in the top half.
This is all part of a much bigger argument. What's the point of organised football?
Is it dog eat dog and sod the rest or is it a collective but someone happens to win?
The way it is at the moment is the clubs who actually generate the money want to keep more of it and the clubs that don’t want more of it. I don't think there is an easy answer.
You could argue that as Ipswich sold their allocation out, then why should Burton make more money because additional Ipswich fans want to watch the game on a stream. They're Ipswich fans so the money should go to Ipswich.
However on the flip side of that is the fact that the Premier league is the best league in the world because the tv money is split between all clubs unlike La Liga where Barca and Real take home far more than the other clubs.
So i think it's probably fairest if it's split evenly.
Make no mistake though, Holt isn't raising this issue as some kind of 'for the good of football' thing, he's clearly raising it because he knows his side are the smallest in the division and he wants a cut of the money that other clubs fans are spending.