The Premier League have finally realised that they might be able to make more money by streaming football matches directly to fans Netflix-style and are intending to do just that.

Richard Masters of Premier League speech during the cocktail reception to celebrate the Premier League Asia Trophy, the youth tournament and showcase the wider football development work in China. during the Premier League Asia Trophy on July 19, 2019 in Shanghai, China.
SHANGHAI, CHINA – JULY 19: Richard Masters of Premier League speech during the cocktail reception to celebrate the Premier League Asia Trophy, the youth tournament and showcase the wider football development work in China. during the Premier League Asia Trophy on July 19, 2019 in Shanghai, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images for Premier League)

“During the last [rights bidding] process [for the 2019-22 seasons] we spent quite a lot of time and invested a lot of resources in building our expertise and capacity in ‘direct-to-consumer’,” said Richard Masters, the Premier League’s new chief executive.

“We considered whether strategically it would be the right time to test a few markets then and decided not to. We were ready last time and we will be ready next time should the opportunity arise. Eventually the Premier League will move to a mix of direct- to- consumer and [traditional] media rights sales.”

At present in the UK, if you want to watch every English Premier League match you need a Sky Sports, BT Sports, and Amazon Prime and even then you will be required to find an illegal stream should your team be playing at 3pm on a Saturday.

The Mail on Sunday took a look at how this could possibly work:

Mail on Sunday 9 February 2020
Mail on Sunday 9 February 2020

It would certainly seem to make sense on many fronts to have all games shown on one platform for a much lower price.

I’ve no doubt should this come in, however, it will be in addition to all the other services we already have to pay for and just another way to squeeze even money out of ever-poorer fans.