Football on TV: fans ‘paying almost 60% more to watch all big games than in 2020’
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Analysis shows rise from £89.23 a month to £140.21 between 2019-2020 and 2024-2025 seasons. Football superfans are paying almost 60% more than they were five years ago to watch the 15 most popular tournaments and leagues, as the number of broadcasters and streaming services required to follow them has increased from four to 10 over the last decade.
Ten or so years ago, football fans needed just a subscription to Sky and its sports package, BT Sport and the free-to-air channels ITV and the BBC to be able to watch the top 15 competitions, including the Premier League, English Football League, FA Cup, Champions League as well as the most popular European competitions such as Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga and the MLS in the US.
However, since then the rights for many of the competitions have fragmented, in part fuelled by the streaming revolution. This has resulted in football fans now needing eight subscription services alongside the BBC and ITV if they want to keep watching all the competitions.
New players in the market now include pay-TV broadcaster Premier Sports and the streaming services DAZN Amazon’s Prime Video, AppleTV+ and the aggregator OneFootball, while France’s Ligue 1 has its own direct subscription service. Research by the analytics firm Ampere Analysis found the combined price to subscribe to the eight services needed to catch all the action increased by 57% between the 2019-2020 and 2024-2025 seasons, rising from £89.23 a month to £140.21.
