One of the most frequent ways Sir Keir Starmer likes to pretend to be human is by endlessly repeating on a loop how much he supports Arsenal and loves football. So, when Arsenal reached this year’s Champions League final, the massive Gooner (in the US colloquial sense) wasted no time burnishing his credentials as a robot of the people by generating an open letter to broadcasters TNT Sports, urging the company to remove its exclusive coverage of the final from behind its paywall and show the event free-to-air instead, so everybody in the country could enjoy it, even Tottenham Hotspur supporters.
“Hardworking people shouldn’t have to fork out for a subscription to watch this match,” the PM says. What about people who don’t work hard, like dubious benefits claimants? Should they get to view the game for free too? Because, if someone was in gainful full-time employment and still couldn’t afford to pay to watch the final when it was played, then they truly must have been on a low wage: TNT offered a one-off monthly pass to watch all three European finals involving English clubs this year, not only Arsenal’s, for £4.99 – or approximately £1.66 per game. And, if they honestly couldn’t spare a fiver, fans could have listened to it on BBC Radio Five Live, or simply watched the highlights later that evening on BBC One – just so long as they had the means to pay the much more substantial annual £180
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And what of Aston Villa? What about Crystal Palace? No calls from Two Tier Gunner Kier for their European finals to be made free for their fans to watch. And he may wonder why people hate him and consider him something they would avoid stepping on. Note that both Villa and Palace won their finals.
I do think the freebie society has been going on for a while. People expect things for free and don’t really understand the actual costs.
Point of order… you do NOT need a licence to own a TV, you need a licence to watch BBC television channels, including BBC iPlayer and any live broadcast on any other channel.
Labournomics at work explained by Keir Starmer with his degree in Economic Illiteracy.
TNT Sports’ core business model is to acquire rights of sporting events and sell them wholesale to other broadcasters/platforms, plus selling advertising slots and some pay-per-view. Big events attract big fees and advertisers willing to pay top rates. It brings in significant revenue but because buying the rights is very expensive, it struggles with profitability. Plus competition from the likes of Sky.
Sports clubs rely heavily on fees they receive from broadcasters for revenue, without which ticket prices would have to be much higher.
The Clown Prince of Downing Street wants TNT Sports, having paid for content, to give it away free losing revenue. For a company already struggling to stay in profit, to take the idiot’s advice, bankruptcy threatens. If TNT and others aren’t charging for content, then they won’t be able to afford to buy it and the football clubs and supporters will suffer.
This is the kind of thinking that is running… correction ruining – our Country, in cahoots with that other Professor of Market economics, Rachel from accounts. And heir presumptive economic genius Burnham has an even deeper level… Read more »
Personally I’d rather see TNT, Sky and the rest find their models to be non-profitable and the greedy governing bodies of sports realise that grass-roots engagement (i.e. free to air) matters more than short-term gain.
Tickets to football matches are ridiculously expensive, a big part of the cost is paying players ridiculously high wages. If the socialist clowns got their way and there was a price cap on tickets English clubs wouldn’t be able to compete with the wages top players can earn abroad and fans would end up watching second rate players at low prices. If this is what they want they should go and watch a League 2 team.
Many people would rather watch “second-rate” Indigenous English, Welsh, Scottish & Northern Irish football players play for their respective teams than import lorry-loads of Third World Ethnics to “win for Britain”.
Correction lest there be any misunderstanding:
“Many people including myself” would rather watch Indigenous players playing for Indigenous teams regardless of their ability.
At first glance I thought that was a photo of some African team, but then read the banner and the news, and saw that it was a team representing France. Then it was “Spot the White Man” in the French football team. There were Ethnic Africans, Ethnic Orientals, and Ethnic Indian Subcontinentals/Arabic types, but only a few Indigenous Frenchmen. How is this a “victory” for France?
Well here’s a strange thing in the news about why Arsenal lost:
“With the game hanging in the balance at 1-1, the sight of Martin Odegaard trudging off the pitch was one to behold. How many of Europe’s top clubs would be taking their captain off with 23 minutes to play of regular time?”
“It wasn’t a one-off either. Odegaard is often sacrificed at crucial moments in matches, as [Basque] Arteta looks to shuffle the pack. But captains shouldn’t be easily dispensable from a tactical point of view – their role is much more important than that.”
Mikel Arteta’s first Arsenal fix is obvious after Champions League heartbreak | Football | Sport | Express.co.uk
It seems just more appeasement of the Globalists’ hatred of Blond White Men like the Norwegian captain Martin Odegaard, swapping them out to give the Third World Ethnics more prominence, and ensuring that English teams lose, like politically correct Globalist Gareth Southall.
I disagree on this one.
This event has historically, over many decades, been one of the major events available on terrestrial television. This year for the first time it is not.
Contemptable as I think Starmer is, I agree with him, and I understand his comment to be a personal one, as he is a football fan (of sorts).
In any case, as with cricket and rugby union, when a sport puts it’s crown jewel events behind a paywall, it sacrifices it’s mainstream exposure for short term gain.
The sport should be free to choose what to do with its content, how much to charge etc. How would you like it if the government told you who you could sell your services to, and for how much?
Great article.
The Government never gives you anything. They take from you; launder it to suit their objectives and occasionally give you a few pennies back.
Do enjoy your 2p off a packet of custard creams for six weeks.
“I like football i do, football!”
Couldn’t give a flying f about football!!
Its a popularist well funded distraction for the unthinking Prolls to concentrate on so they don’t look in the right direction, Its a mass control mechanism!
Football matches were a very useful barometer when the grounds were reopened after the vaccine roll-out. No match was complete without a ‘medical emergency’ on the pitch or terraces.
Initially M of the D covered them, then they realised there was a pattern & treated them like a streaker & looked away.
If you listened to a match in real-time you could guarantee that at some stage there’d be a 5 minute delay while some poor fool was carted off to A & E.
Spot on. I’d love to wrap this article around the heads of several people I know but they just wouldn’t get it.
That’s socialism, isn’t it.
Taking the fruits of someone’s hard work and enterprise by force or coercion to give it to someone else.
There is never an end to how much they want to take. It will never be enough. There will always be more.
The trouble, lots of people will have agreed with him and applauded his statement. “Free” stuff has become expected. The state provides lots of things for “free” and so do many large private firms. Try explaining to people that everything has a cost in materials or effort and “free” means someone else is paying. They will then most likely talk about fat cats – bosses of private firms make too much money, they can pay it out of their wages, or if it’s the state then taxes on the rich can be increased. I’ve said this before but the more prosperous we get and the more specialised, the further away we get from an understanding of economics and how the world works, because most people simply don’t need to understand this stuff. The self employed understand though.
fOoTbaLL iS a YOomAn RItE
Skating is a long standing hobby/passion of mine. I just noodle around trying to do stupid tricks but through skating I’ve spent time with people from the ice figure skating and more recently the roller speed skating “communities”. I’ve had hundreds of conversations in which people lament the “lack of funding” for their sports. Both are niche sports globally, especially roller speed, and even more so in this country. They are both popular in certain countries and I guess in those countries there are more resources available as a result.
People complain about the silly money in football – you can argue about how some of it is allocated but a lot does filter down to the grass roots.
Go out and do a sport!
All our politicians claim to follow a team… it’s our version of the Americans doing religion in the election run-up.
Remember Blair’s ‘man of the people’ claim to have watched Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle, when he would have been four? “I’m a pretty straight kinda guy”, my aunt…
If the rioting in Paris last night was a direct consequence of PSG winning the Champions League, maybe PSG, or PSGs ticket buying fans, or TNTs customers should pick up the tab.
As it is, the poor tax-payer & shop owners will end up footing the bill.
Ooh, I don’t think we would want to set that precedent.
If I run a business activity of some sort, I don’t want to be held responsible for the subsequent actions of people who have engaged in my activity just because they or someone else claims that their actions are somehow related to my activity. Where exactly does that end?
I tend to agree though a case can be made for businesses being expected to provide security personnel when large crowds are to be present in connection with that business, on the basis that it is fairer to attribute at least some of the cost directly to that business rather than losing it in general taxation.
Ok, so it’s the taxpayer after all, oh & the insurance companies customers when costs go up the following year.
I doubt very much if it was the Indigenous French rioting, especially since they are hardly represented on the team.
The PSG match was an excuse, not a reason… and, it was going to kick off (if you’ll pardon the pun), regardless of the result.
“Free” NHS cost incident on each person £3 500pa… that’s £14 000pa for a family of four – cheap at half price – paid via general taxation, interest on Government borrowing, debauchery of the currency by money printing, inflation, reduction in provision of public services.
Because these costs are unseen, they don’t register with the majority of people, therefore don’t exist.
The railways companies are subsidised to the tune of £12billion pa. Then we have people complaining about the price of rail tickets – which are price-capped… Hurrah! – but they don’t realise their tickets are costing them far more because they pay twice because that’s what the subsidy is for to keep face price of ticket down – first they paywhen buying their tickets, secondly through their taxes. Then there are others who don’t use the railways helping pay for the tickets of those that do.
Nationalisation is popular among people who didn’t experience it post-war up to the 1980s – because there’s nothing like having Government running things “efficiently” and paying for everything twice.
That’s approved bread and approved circuses funded by approved taxation.
Not so attractive when phrased like that.
Brilliant article. Useful information to use to show the brain fogged normies that the welfare state is a scam that keeps on taking until we’re at 100% taxation. Comrades.
Queer Stalin:
Why? What is the logic to that?
Hardworking dedicated football fans spend hundreds and sometimes thousands on their season tickets and travel to and from matches in the UK and beyond. Other hardworking people on low and no wages thanks to the Tories, Labour and net stupid zero can’t afford that.
So all football matches should be free to watch on TV and at the grounds if Queer Stalin’s logic is to be followed.
It costs £170 to what England play rugby at Twickenham.
And to watch on TV or online requires a subscription plus a TV licence.
So shouldn’t all TV be free to watch for hardworking people and not just bloody football with no TV licence if we follow the logic all the way.