It's vital for the health of lower-division and non-League football in the UK – and not just for financial reasons
television rights deal is set to ensure that more of its matches than ever before will be screened live in the UK — an increase of around 25 per cent seems likely.
No other nation in the world boasts a football culture like England, where attendances are so impressive so far down the pyramid. Many other established football nations don’t even have a system that goes further than a fifth division, but in the English game, you can drop down to thetier and find matches which are competitive, of pretty good quality, and are contested in front of decent attendances by players remunerated for doing so.
So while the assumption is that Saturday at 3pm would become some kind of ‘bonus’ TV slot featuring the Premier League’s less exciting matches, realistically it could be the showpiece event of the footballing weekend. Go to seventh-tier Haringey Borough in north London and ask one of the 400ish people in the ground who they support and they will probably say one of their Premier League neighbours, Tottenham and Arsenal. If those two sides were both playing on television at the same time as them, it seems implausible that none of the people spectating at Haringey would be interested in watching it.And football clubs at that level are vital, irreplaceable centres for their local community.
And these institutions are boosted and sustained by one very simple concept — they aren’t competing with Premier League matches live on television. It’s not difficult to understand.
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