The Future of The Premier League: Where Next?
I’m sure last Sunday evening brought a sense of relief to the fans of Premier League teams after one of the most entertaining final days in the history of the League. From the nail-biting finish to the title race that was taken right to the wire, the fight for all three European competitions, and even the relegation battle, it only confirmed the notion that the Premier League is the most entertaining in the world.
Many people will now be lost without their weekly dose of watching their favourite team in action, but it could help certain fans get their blood pressure back to normal levels after the emotional rollercoaster of the 2021/22 season. It is now easier to analyse the business side and commercial growth of the league in the first season with full fan attendance post the COVID lockdowns.
The Premier League is not just the most successful off the pitch in terms of popularity and commercially, but English clubs in Europe on the pitch in recent years have helped cement the notion that the league is slowly overtaking to become the league with the best quality. Shown by the fact that we have had all English finals in both the Champions League / Europa League three times in the last five years.
In terms of star players, it seemed that the usual trend for the best players in the world was that they came to the Premier League to advertise themselves before getting their big move to another European giant, most likely either Real Madrid or Barcelona. And this does still happen, but to a lesser extent, and the players following this path aren’t like Gareth Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Eden Hazard in the recent past, it is now players of the level of Ferran Torres and Adama Traore. This might be still underselling the pull of La Liga and co, but there has certainly been a shift in power in the Premier League’s favour, especially post-COVID, where it did not impact the top English clubs due to them being almost financially bulletproof due to the global commercial success of the league. This has only been solidified with Kylian Mbappe opting not to join Real Madrid in favour of staying with PSG, and Erling Haaland, whom many predict that these two stars will be the future of football, snubbing Real Madrid for Manchester City, but time will only tell if they follow the path of Ronaldo, Bale and co.
However, the Premier League is in a stage of post-commercialisation, and constantly uses its stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Mohammed Salah, and Kevin De Bruyne to dominate the global football market, but where do they go from here to grow even further?
The improvement of the quality of the league is continuing year after year, not only as the traditional top four has now grown to a top-six, but other teams who are more used to mid-table positions are getting increased investment like what has aided Chelsea and Manchester City to get to where they are now. The most recent example is how Newcastle United have been acquired by Saudi investment and saw themselves spend the most money in the country in the following transfer window, overhauling the entire club, and seeing them go from fighting relegation to finishing in an impressive 11th place. The main issue with this that the public, fans, and other clubs have with this are the shambolic human rights issues that surround these new owners. But some argue that this is not for football fans to fight the cause, and others say that it is a great way to welcome them in to own the club, but they will need to adjust their practices if they want to stay. This is in line with some of the new policies implemented by the government after the super league proposal, with an independent football regulator becoming involved to mandate any new owners who want to come into English football – to stop what has happened with Chelsea and Manchester United’s ownership.
The league is also testing out new ways to broadcast their content, as Sky and BT who have held the rights for several years are now losing out on certain matchdays to the streaming platform Amazon Prime, which has had access to a couple of matchdays a year for a few seasons now. This experiment has gone much better than their Pay-Per-View test which was a ridiculous and scandalous way to exploit fans. This could and should lead to the Premier League experimenting with their own all in one streaming service whereby fans pay a fixed annual or monthly fee to be able to watch every match all year round for the season. This would have to be profitable enough however to match the broadcasting payments they receive from the big, established television companies. Another sticking point that they would have to combat is that it is against the law in the UK to televise 3 pm Premier League matches, to encourage fans to go and support teams local to them who are lower in the footballing pyramid – however during COVID impacted times, this rule was lifted and shown to be very out of date as it only displayed positive impacts rather than negative on the lower clubs.
Another way that the league could develop in terms of media is with more behind-the-scenes documentaries and content in general. Amazon Prime’s All or Nothing series has been done on many sports was done with Manchester City and Tottenham, and the 2021/22 season with Arsenal is soon to be released – and these have all been huge hits for the clubs, gaining extremely high views and bringing new eyes to the sport and these specific clubs, as they offer a deeper insight for hardcore and casual fans to view the workings of a top tier English football club. This was also successful on Netflix for opposite clubs Sunderland and Juventus, plus in other sports – most notably, Formula 1: Drive to Survive was a huge hit for increasing the viewership of the sport, particularly in a younger audience, as a gateway to understanding the sport and the professionals who work in it. The league should look further into this to increase younger consumers becoming fans.
The league has recently added several different awards such as the Playmaker award (for the player with the most assists in the league for the season) and awards such as ‘Most improbable comeback’, a cynic or older, more ‘hardcore’ fan would call these awards pointless, however, they have a huge impact on the so-called ‘Fifa Generation’, whereby the popular football video game has birthed a generation of ‘stat geeks’ and fans who are obsessed with awards, and special things to add to the experience of the game. The way the game has evolved from even the 90s and 2000s has been unheard of, from vuvuzelas to official club apps, the increase in technology to aid the fan experience is not only inevitable but extremely positive for the game and especially for the most popular league in the world, it will be much easier to implement.
The league and the clubs in it are realising that moving into web 3 is one of the smarter moves they can make as that is the way the world is moving; they will have to either adapt and grow or be left behind. This has been shown as the league is close to agreeing to a deal with ConsenSys for an NFT deal worth up to £434 million over the next four years, and many top clubs like Liverpool creating their own NFTs and blockchain environments for fans to get even closer with their team and gain great benefits for joining these clubs. However, the league will want all the slices of the pie to themselves, and as they have restricted John Terry etc from promoting their own NFTs, are clubs next? Where do they draw the line?
In short, the Premier League has plenty of options to increase its revenues and growth as a business, but what decisions will they make? Will these be successful, or will they be leapfrogged by other competing leagues?
