Why I won’t be paying £15 to watch Brighton on Premier League PPV

You have to admire the Premier League, Sky Sports and BT Sports. Just when you think they must have exhausted every possible method to fleece loyal football supporters, they go and find a new way to carry out open surgery on the wallet.

The latest plan involves charging supporters £15 per match to watch games that are not included in the normal live television schedule. It is in effect a PPV service for Premier League football on top of what we already fork out for television packages and season tickets.

According to reports, just one Premier League club voted against the PPV proposal. Take a bow Leicester City. The Foxes were the single voice sticking up for the everyday fan. The other 19 – including Brighton & Hove Albion – simply saw pound signs flashing before their eyes.

The financial commitment that goes into being a Brighton fans is a significant one. An Amex Stadium season ticket in the West Stand upper costs £650 and although the club stopped direct debits in September, we have already forked out six months of payments for a product we are unlikely to see in 2020-21, barring a minor miracle occurring and stadiums being allowed to open their doors. That’s the best part of £325 with nothing to show for it.

Brighton have said that any credit in the bank from this season will be put towards season tickets for 2021-22, which is nice. It’s not much use though for those fans who face uncertain futures work wise as the threat of a new lockdown and a second wave hang over the economy.

That money sitting in the Albion’s bank account ready to go towards matches in a year’s time doesn’t help put food on tables or pay mortgages.

Add to that season ticket money another £150 for Sky Sports and BT Sports subscriptions and the cost of watching Brighton in 2020-21 is already at the £475 mark

If two thirds of the Albion’s remaining games are not selected by Sky and BT for their standard coverage, then supporters will need to find another £330 to see every match left to play.

That is bad enough. It gets worse though when you consider that Brighton are basically telling season ticket holders to pay £15 to watch a match which they have already in effect paid to see.

Imagine forking out your £650 for the season, only to be told that you need to cough up another £15 on the gate at the Amex to get into each and every home game. It is beyond a joke.

There seems little chance of clubs allowing season ticket holders to watch for free either. At last month’s Albion Fans Forum, Paul Barber said that doing so would breach broadcast contracts.

Supporters might have been the ones that kept Brighton & Hove Albion in business through the Gillingham and Withdean years, but it is very clear that the Albion now dance to the tune of Sky Sports rather than thinking of those who ensured there is club to do the dancing at all.

We will no doubt get a statement from Barber soon saying that the Albion have been hit hard by the pandemic and that every supporter paying £15 to watch will help the club out financially.

This might wash a little easier had a transfer window not closed on Monday in which £1.2 billion was spent by Premier League clubs. A further £200 million was paid straight into the pockets of agents.

And it’s for that reason that I won’t be paying £15 per game to watch Brighton this season. If the Premier League can spend £1.2 billion in three months on new players, then it doesn’t need to charge fans on a PPV basis on top of a £150 commitment to a sports package.

West Bromwich Albion at the Amex is the first game under the new arrangement. Season ticket holders have already paid for this game in the money taken via direct debit. The club now expect them to pay again for the right to watch it.

The good news is that there are other ways to keep up with the Albion. Illegal steams are going to boom in the wake of the Premier League’s decision.

If you don’t fancy hearing an overexcited Chinese commentator screaming the name Leandro Trossard, then you can always turn to good old fashioned radio coverage.

Brighton fans are very lucky to have the excellent Johnny Cantor and Warren Aspinall on BBC Radio Sussex. A lot of local radio stations are pretty biased in their coverage for fear of upsetting or besmirching the club and having their future access restricted.

Not Cantor or Aspinall though, who are refreshingly honest in their analysis. Aspinall’s passionate assessments about slack marking and disappointment at the lack of a new striker are worth tuning in for by themselves.

Or you could take your £15 and spend it at a local non league club, rather than handing it over to the mega-rich Premier League on top of the considerable sums you are already paying.

The average Southern Combination League side will charge £6 entrance, £1 for a programme, £4.50 for a cheeseburger and chips and £3.50 for a pint. Which you can drink while watching the game stood anywhere you like.

Give £15 to a community asset run by volunteers for the love of the game that genuinely needs the money to survive? Or hand it over to clubs who make hundreds of millions of pounds in television contracts alone, furthering their greed? It’s a no brainer.

There is one other very good reason not to support the Premier League’s gluttony. Say 500,000 Liverpool fans pay £15 each to watch Jurgen Klopp’s side take on Brighton at the Amex.

Suddenly, the Albion are raking in far more in matchday revenue than they would with 30,000 in the stadium. Financially, it then makes sense for Premier League clubs to keep a PPV TV model and empty grounds over fans buying tickets.

We have always known that clubs don’t really care about fans; we are just cash cows to them. But even by the Premier League’s high standards, this latest way of fleecing supporters is extraordinary.

£15 every week on top of everything else I’ve paid to Sky, BT and the Albion to watch my team on PPV television? It’s not for me, Clive.