From The NBA To The Premier League

The English Premier League stands head and shoulders above all other football leagues on the planet when it comes to monetising television rights for games. The league has extended a deal worth over $6 billion until the end of the 2024/2025 campaign.

The surging popularity of the tournament, year on year, means it has left even its fiercest European rivals like Serie A of Italy and La Liga of Spain in the dust. It also explains the prominence, and at times dominance, of English sides in the latter stages of European competition.

For many fans in England the league has now prioritised profit over people. Kick-off days and times are set to suit TV schedules and perhaps do not have the best interests of travelling supporters at heart.

Friday and Monday night games are a regular occurrence now. Whatever happened to 3pm Saturday? Friday and Monday night matches mean the Premier League is now beamed across the planet on two days where originally it wouldn’t have been, from an economic standpoint it makes a lot of sense.

3pm on a Saturday has not become extinct however. In Britain at least, Saturday 3pm games are forbidden to be televised. The ‘blackout’ rule means no games can be shown between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday. The idea being that if the games aren’t on TV then fans will continue to watch games in the stadiums and bring money into their local clubs. Perhaps the league is one for tradition after all?

The recently announced expansion of the Champions League shows a growing trend in professional football. To squeeze every last penny out of potential sponsors and television deals.

Yet, some might say things are only getting started and that the NBA’s playbook is the blueprint that European soccer might profit from. The NBA has an 82-game regular season and then play-offs at the end of the year to decide the Champion. There are more games, more breaks and certainly more advertisements.

Imagine if the Premier League top teams went into a knock-out tournament after the season finished to decide the title. Don’t forget that the NBA don’t play single knock-out games either, they play a series of seven games and the first team to win four matches advances to the next series.

Obviously the viewership sky rockets for the elimination games in the NBA post-season. The five most viewed games in NBA history have all come in game five, six or seven of the finals series.

The NBA also broadcasts a series of back to back games on Christmas Day. Five blockbuster games one after the other, from traditional rivalries to the Lakers Vs the Celtics to modern day mega match-ups like Golden State against Miami. The Premier League has a host of fixtures from December 26th onwards but only one or two a day are televised.

Perhaps Argentinian football and its famous derby weekend, which happens to be taking place this weekend, is what we can expect from the Premier League in the future as it moves further and further along the line of becoming a big entertainment industry.

This weekend in Argentina every local derby that could possibly exist in the top flight is being played. One by one, from Friday to Monday, and every game is broadcasted live for the country to watch at home.

The big one comes on Sunday afternoon as Boca Juniors host River Plate in the world famous ‘Superclásico.’ Various Buenos Aires city derbies will take place including the likes of the Avellaneda derby on Saturday night, played between Racing Club and Carlos Tevez’s Independiente. There is only 300 metres between the stadiums of these two historic clubs and the rivalry splits households.

Cities like Rosario, Santa Fe, La Plata and Cordoba will also host their hottest derbies this weekend. As you can imagine it’s a media frenzy and a weekend with a lot of build up. It’s like the Manchester, Merseyside and North London derbies all taking place in a Super Sunday triple header… the Premier League cannot be far away from that.

Somewhere between Argentina’s mouth-watering derby weekender and the NBA’s playoff bonanza lies the future of Premier League football. A weekend of derbies or five games in a row on Boxing Day might be the limit for the average Premier League fan. However a mention of playoffs, or heaven forbid… no relegation, would ignite protests in the streets of England. It should not come to that.

The culture clash between show business and the average season ticket holder continues. The answer will be some sort of compromise in the middle. Money talks of course, but fans showed the power of their collective voice when they brought an abrupt end to a breakaway super league movement led by 12 major clubs in 2021.