Ever wondered how many people watch an Aston Villa game when it’s screen on Sky or BT Sport (after they’ve changed the date and buggered your travel and work plans)? Below is a a table detailing the average audience for each Premier League team when their games are screened live. The table is taken from the Sporting Intelligence website which has done an extensive article covering in detail the audiences for all games and various comparison tables. The link for which is at the bottom of this post.
Before we look at Villa, some key facts:
- Sky Sports have the main share of live games, having paid £2.28 billion for a majority of the UK live rights for the 2013-16 period.
- BT Sport paid £738m for their own share of matches.
- Sky have 11+ million subscribers with 7 million of them subscribing to their sports channels
- Around 5 million people have access to BT Sport’s channels
- Sky average viewers per game 1.2 million / BT Sport average 562,000
- The most viewed Premier League live TV game was the title run-in clash between Liverpool vs Chelsea which had 2.7 million watching.
- Manchester United and Liverpool are the most popular teams on TV despite both winning f**k all!
Aston Villa Live TV Audiences 2013/14
Villa were the 8th most watched team last season with 14.4 million total viewers from 16 live games. Villa’s most popular TV game last season was surprisingly the home game against Spurs which attracted 1.39 million viewers, the next popular was the away trip to Anfield against Liverpool, which saw an audience of 1.37 million watch. The seven-goal showdown with West Brom only brought in 518,000 viewers on Sky though.
The lowest viewing figures for a Villa match was the trip to Norwich which pulled in only 281,000 viewers, but that was a BT Sport game. The highest viewing figures for a BT Sport game is 1.3 million for Manchester United vs Spurs.
The most popular Premier League clubs by live TV audiences 2013/14
The original Sporting Intelligence article
These stats don’t really mean anything. The most hyped up games will get the biggest audiences regardless of fan base. More concerning is the amount of live games each club is getting. How on earth have the likes of spurs got themselves into a position to get so much coverge? Likewise, if man utd keep finishing outside the top six will that have an impact on the number of times they are shown live? It should do. If football truly is to be considered a fair sport all clubs should get equal coverage and equal brand exposure.