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Is the football TV bonanza over?

Doom and gloom merchants are out in force forecasting the end of football finance as we know it.  All sorts of claims are being made and most of them are highly speculative.

The latest to jump on the bandwagon is entrepreneur is Marcus Luer, CEO of Total Sports Asia, Asia's leading sports marketing agency.   Perhaps he hopes he can whip up some business?

Luer told Kasper Kronenberg of offthepitch.com 'Football clubs all over the world should realise the bonanza is over.  The prodigious broadcasting deals, spearheaded by the Premier League, won't happen again.  And it is not because of Covid-19.  The pandemic simply fast-tracked the inevitable, which was already very clear to anyone paying attention: the pay TV model is dead.'

Surprising, then, that the Bundesliga has just secured a deal above pessimistic forecasts with only a small financial hit.

Still, Luer may have a point, although the pay TV model was never alive for me as the local council bans Sky dishes.  Luer argues 'People simply don't want to pay for 100+ channels anymore, and the younger generation is used not to pay for anything at all.'

Luer says that clubs should not look to Amazon as a saviour: 'The rights holders need Amazon more than the other way round.'

In the long run, he may be right.  But, in the long run, as Keynes reminded us, we are all dead.
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