by Phoenix Force »
11 Jan 2021 15:32
Forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere - I am far too old and grumpy to bother with a subject search to trace it.
This was reported in one of the broadsheets recently and makes interesting (ish) reading. Clubs really do benefit from those who pay for their streaming access via iFollow. The way it works is that for every single home fan who pays for a game the home club gets 100% of their subscription - currently £10; the home club also gets the full subscription for the first 500 away fans but the away club gets the rest of them. This leads to the anomaly that a well supported away team could seriously benefit from the Covid situation and the reliance on streaming.
Take a game where the home team has 1000 fans willing to buy iFollow streaming. They make £10000 from their own fans. If they are playing a team with a much bigger support base whose fans buy 2500 subscriptions then the home team gets the first 500 (=£5000) and hence their income totals £15000. The away club gets the remaining 2000 subscriptions and so earns £20000 for a game they wouldn't have got a penny for in ticket money under normal times.
Several smaller clubs have shown examples of this and the actual numbers are more diverse, with big away support making real differences to incomes.