Fixture changes for December and January

I suppose the players will be happy as it means they'll get to spend time with their families over Christmas.

Absolute joke the way these TV companies continually disrupt people's plans.

Once you sell your soul, then it's difficult to get it back, especially when the people who have bought your soul, just keep on pushing the boundaries.

Actually, pushing that fixture a little further away means we all may be able to enjoy Christmas a bit more.

Limits could have been put in place, which would have preserved the rights and interests of clubs and fans. (Fans being the ones who go to the games, not those who sit at home or in the pub). But instead, the idiots who 'negotiated' just saw the pound signs.

It is too late to draw this back in. The horse of common sense has well and truly bolted. The fans are now the last consideration. It is all about Sky et al keeping their advertising revenue ticking over.

I was very naive when TV took over the running of the Premier League. I honestly thought admission to grounds would become cheaper because of all the income the clubs would get rolling in.

They should have been cheaper but I forgot that clubs' interest in fans was the last thing on their list… always was and always will be.

My entire family is home for Christmas and every year the Boxing Day game is on. We all look forward to it.

How do you take away a Boxing Day game???? What the actual hell man???

Furious.

All match-going fans of Premier League teams should stop their Sky subscriptions and any other streaming service they pay for to see live Premier League games. It is a genie that can be put back into the bottle if people use the power they have.

I see comments like yours in a bevy of sports: your football, our football, basketball, hockey, etc.

You're 100% correct. But to give up watching the Blues or any of my other American teams? No.

Sometimes you just have to recognize we're all pawns in life's game of chess. The power people will do what they do, and I'll pay to watch.

Just always bear in mind under the right circumstances, the pawn can become a queen and make a difference. But to give up the sports? They'd need to charge a mint frankly for me to drop the TV coverage. It's gross and awful, but it is what it is.

Living in Canada, I think over the last number of seasons I have watched the Premier League with about 4/5 different suppliers with every change costing more.

Over the years I have gone from TSN in Canada, but they just had a featured game, to a company in Ireland that covered all Premier League games, to DAZN that covered all games, and now Fubo TV from the States that I believe is an affiliate of Peacock TV. The trouble with this one is I have to take a tv package with it that is already in my normal TV package.

Sky Sports are the problem: they are raking in billions and much wants more.

But I think I might be right in saying the domestic package (Sky, TNT, Amazon) is a whole separate kettle of wax / ball of fish from said overseas package of which you are both a beneficiary and subscriber.

I'm intrigued by the oft-promulgated concept that UK kick-off times are selected to cater to specific foreign markets. Can anyone explain how this actually works? I mean prime time in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, the Far East, and the Americas is spread pretty much literally around the clock.

The cause of anguish is really the arcane Saturday afternoon blackout. If they did away with this and the clubs provided live streaming to their paid-up members, then the individual clubs could benefit more directly from their fanbase.

I think it is probably fair to say that most Premier League clubs rely on their huge respective portions of TV-derived income… yet most (18 out of 20 was the last figure I heard) are still making a loss despite this, and need money injected from owners or investors to continue running.

So imagine what an almighty clusterfuck it would now be without said thoroughly despised TV income.

The match-going fans don't realise how much power they really have because they are very loyal, very passionate and possibly even a little bit stupid (sorry to everyone who doesn't miss a game👍) because they don't get the respect they deserve, whilst definitely contributing massively with regards to helping make football such a popular television sport.

Football survived without the crowds during Covid, but surely this wouldn't be sustainable now everyone is back in the land of the living?

As for clubs' greed, I sometimes wonder that, if we have, as reported, a 27,000 waiting list for season tickets, why we build a ground with only about 15,000 increase in crowd capacity over our present ground, or is it because of the new site capacity?

Apologies if this was raised in the original argument.