‘This is so wrong’, ‘Disgusting’ – Some Leeds fans react to latest EFL update on Twitter
The EFL sent out an official communication on Friday that outlined the deal that has been struck with Sky Sports over broadcasting the remainder of the 19/20 season. And the news left a lot of Leeds United fans cold.
Every single Premier League game is set to be broadcast between Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon and the BBC, with all but BT Sport making some free-to-view.
In contrast, Sky Sports will be showing just 30 games live on TV in HD, along with the 15 play-off games.
The rest of the games will be streamed on the iFollow platform or the clubs’ own in-house services. Leeds have LUTV, which charges £10 a game for fans in the UK.
There are two sides to this argument.
First, the fans. £10 is a lot to watch a streamed game. They’d much prefer to watch them in HD on Sky Sports with the big-money production values. And fans wanted some games to be made free-to-view.
However, the EFL has obviously worked out a plan that it thinks will balance the needs of the fans and the finances of the club.
We know Leeds will lose around £2.5m from the loss of matchday revenue from the final five league games of the season.
They’d need to sell 250,000 streams to make up for that and, with all the will in the world from an amazing Leeds fan base, we don’t think that’s going to happen. Season ticket holders will get the games for free.
However, some revenue is better than no revenue and LUTV is a (mostly) reliable good-quality stream.
Not all Leeds fans were down on the EFL…
However, this is what the majority made of the news…
https://twitter.com/DeedaLUFC/status/1268960582524428288
One fan made a good point, saying that LUTV would have to be prepared for the extra demand. We’ve never had much of a problem with it but if a big game is streamed then it could be severely tested.
If the stream goes down, fans will be furious.
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