As the new sports seasons kick off, the cost of following your favourite team will not come cheap.
The Premier League got underway last night, with the Champions League and top-level rugby to follow in the coming weeks.
Choosing even the cheapest options to watch football and rugby union will require subscriptions to Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Premier Sports.
The cost will set fans back more than £60 a month.
This week it also emerged that all of Ulster Rugby’s games for the next three seasons will be broadcast live on Premier Sports as part of a new TV deal for the European Champions Cup.
Sky Sports holds the rights to the majority of Premier League matches, as well as the Scottish Premiership, while TNT has the broadcasting rights for some second-choice Premier League games alongside the Champions League. Amazon Prime will also show 20 Premier League matches.
This week, a survey of the cheapest deals showed that fans will have to pay £22 for Sky, £31 for TNT and £11 for Premier Sports. These can vary depending on offers and other TV subscriptions.
But, taken together, the average fan faces a bill of at least £64 each month – or £640 running through to May.
While many football fans make the trip to England and Scotland each week, most rely on TV coverage.
Sky has dominated live broadcasting of the English top flight since it secured rights to the first season of what was then called the Premiership in 1992.
This campaign will be no different, with the majority of live televised games (128 fixtures) to be shown on Sky.
The FA Cup will be shown live by BBC and ITV, the Carabao Cup is televised by Sky, and the Scottish Cup is on Premier Sports.
TNT Sports holds the broadcasting rights to the Champions League, Europa League and the Conference League.
As well as the rugby, Premier Sports will also show Nations League games and 2026 World Cup qualifiers featuring Northern Ireland, the Republic, Scotland and Wales.
The sale of games to broadcasters is a multi-billion pound process, which generates a substantial portion of the revenue for each Premier League club, enabling them to pay huge transfer fees and wages.
The Premier League bundle televised games into “packages”, each of which is then individually sold to different broadcasters.
The packages contain different groupings of games, depending on kick-off times, days of the week and match weeks.
For example, Sky Sports has the first choice of game in each round, usually televised on a Sunday at 4.30pm. This weekend, it is Chelsea v Manchester City.
TNT has second pick, usually at 12.30pm on a Saturday, starting with Ipswich Town, managed by NI’s Kieran McKenna, taking on Liverpool.
Sky holds the bulk of other rights, with Premier League games on Friday evenings, Saturday evenings, Sunday afternoons and Monday nights.
This season is the last of the current Premier League broadcasting deal. The next will begin in 2025/26 and run until 2028. It will see the number of televised games increase and the number of broadcasters in the pool decrease.
All games that do not kick off on the Saturday 3pm window will be televised under the new deal, increasing the number of matches being broadcast.
Sky Sports and TNT will show all the available games – 215 of them on Sky.
The sales process was as lucrative as ever, with the Premier League reporting the final deal to be worth £6.7bn.
While this is a 4% increase on the value of the previous deal, it is below the rate of inflation. Premier League clubs might generate revenues higher than other leagues, but they also pay out more in playing staff wages and transfer fees.
The most recent Deloitte report on football finances found that Premier League clubs take in £6.1bn in revenue from all their income streams, but also spend £4bn in wages.
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