DISQUS

Arsenal = Radiohead. Ahead of their times, brilliant quality, yet lacking in awards. And mostly misunderstood by the masses.

Ooops...guess I should have kept reading the blog before posting that...

Because grounds are different sizes, this ranking is pretty meaningless. What would be more interesting is this:

Attendance as a % of ground size. That is, what teams are filling up the seats they have.

Avg. Attendance based on away teams. That is, what teams draw a higher % of attendance when they play on the road.

Did you ever think that perhaps the games with EPL teams garner higher ratings, and therefore ESPN has the responsibility to their advertisers to show the game that will have the highest ratings?

TV stations are not socialist centers to give equal time to everyone; they're out there to make money.

Ryan is correct. Without ratings, there is no guarantee to give advertisers how many people will view their ad. That is why you see almost all direct-response advertising on FSC now. (With direct response advertising, the advertisers know exactly how their ads do by how many phone cards, hair products, or soccer magazines they sell. In fact, most DR advertising is paid on a net basis -- meaning that if the advertiser sells $10,000 in product, FSC will get $5,000 in return. As opposed to regular advertising where FSC says, "we'll provide you with 45,000 viewers who will see your ad, so pay us $10,000 for that".

Gaffer, would you prefer that the players get paid 40k/year, and the owners pad their pockets even more? There's a lot of money to be made in the EPL, and I'd much rather it be spread around to the players than the owners hording it all.

The problem with the playoff games: it works for lower leagues, as they only have their own league games going on in April/May, barring a once-a-decade cup run by 1 or 2 teams. But those teams in the Premiership that would have to play playoffs are very likely to be involved in that current year's Champions League, UEFA Cup, or FA Cup games. Adding more games to the end of the season to the teams that are ALREADY playing more games than any other team is asinine.

I do agree with the comment about allowing people to be able to see every game possible. I do pay the extra $15/month for Setanta on DirecTV (really, the only reason I have DTV instead of FIOS) and last year I was able to see, between FSC, Setanta and ESPN2, every game that Arsenal played except 2. But what about fans of Newcastle, 'Boro or West Ham? They're lucky to get 50%, and maybe not even that many. While the demand isn't there as much as it is for the NFL Sunday Ticket, if they can put together that MLS package for cable or DTV, why not EPL as well?

I can not stand it when people whinge and moan about players not showing any loyalty to a club when they ask for more money. First, can any player ever be 100% assured that the loyalty will be returned to them? How many times have we seen clubs cut and run on players after 1 or 2 bad seasons, or getting rid of players once they're just a tad past their prime because their price is too high. Secondly, you're suggesting that players should just get paid what the clubs offer them and that's it. I guess you'd rather have billionaire owners get only richer than have millionaire players earn a few extra quid.

As someone who doesn't make in 5 years what Adebayor wants in 1 week, and a Gooner, it doesn't bother me at all that he has asked for more money. He's not holding Arsenal hostage: they don't have to pay the increased request. If he wants to go somewhere else then, they can get a lot in return. I much (MUCH) prefer folks like Cesc or Theo who have stated unequivocally that they love the Arsenal and will be staying, but hoping all players are like that is pretty obtuse. It's a big business now, like it or not. You could always go watch non-league matches and enjoy "the purity" of players working 2 jobs. I prefer watching good footy myself.