Perhaps the newsiest moment of this week’s Financial Times Football Business summit came when Richard Masters, Premier League chief executive revealed that the league is finally building a direct-to-consumer streaming platform, which will debut next season in Singapore. The idea has been floating around since before the pandemic, with most people referring to it by the rather tongue-in-cheek moniker “Premflix”. Its real name, we now know, will be Premier League+. Masters called it “an important step” and a “big change” for the world’s most popular football league. So, what does this all mean? Firstly, the Singapore move should be viewed as an experiment. The Premier League is doing this in a small but mature market and in partnership with a willing broadcaster, StarHub. The stakes, therefore, are relatively low. It gives the league the chance to test its capabilities in all sorts of things it hasn’t had to do before — such as taking subscription payments and pricing its own product...