Significant fall in Premier League TV viewers for 2024/25 season – Sky Sports and TNT well down | OneFootball

It has now been revealed that there was a large drop in Premier League TV viewing figures for the 2024/25 season.

An exclusive (see below) from The Times making public the news.

The Sky Sports viewing numbers were down 10 per cent compared to the 2023/24 season.

Whilst the TNT Sports Saturday 12.30pm kick-off showed a five per cent drop on the 2023-24 season, as well as a 17 per cent drop with the two full midweek rounds (where some matches are played concurrently).

This drop in Premier League TV viewing figures has been largely blamed on the title race having been decided early on, the same with the three to be relegated.

The fact that the likes of Sky Sports keep raising their prices doesn’t exactly help.

Nor does the fact that when we got to the final day of the 2024/25 Premier League season, Sky Sports decided to show a meaningless kick about which meant nothing and neither side could move position (Liverpool v Crystal Palace), rather than Newcastle v Everton and/or Fulham v Man City that would help decide which clubs would get Champions League football or not. When they pull daft stunts like that, it just drives more and more people to go and search out how to view illegal streams.

Figures show 10 per cent decline in Sky Sports viewer numbers after a record-breaking 2023-24, with lack of a close title race or relegation battle partly to blame

TV viewer numbers for Premier League matches dropped last season after two previous record-breaking years, due in part to a lack of a close title race or relegation battle.

Sky Sports viewing numbers were down 10 per cent last season to be broadly in line with the 2021-22 campaign. TNT Sports’ Saturday 12.30pm kick-off showed a 5 per cent drop on the 2023-24 season, and a 17 per cent drop with the two full midweek rounds — where some matches are played concurrently — included.

The numbers were presented to Premier League clubs at their annual meeting last week. Clubs were told Liverpool’s romp to the title without a serious challenge from Arsenal or Manchester City meant viewer numbers dropped off particularly over the last six weeks of the season — until then they had been close to the 2023-24 season.

The lack of a compelling relegation battle also affected interest towards the end of the campaign with Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Southampton effectively guaranteed to go down a couple of months before the end of the season.

Statistics sent out to the clubs in the 2023-24 season showed Sky Sports’ average match viewership up by 4.1 per cent to 1.78million, with TNT Sports up 14 per cent to an average of 1.15million viewers.

Next season will see even more live Premier League matches on TV when a new broadcast deal starts. Sky will show at least 215 top-flight matches live, up from 128, including all games moved to Sundays because of clubs’ involvement in European competitions.

TNT Sports will retain 52 games including the Saturday 12.30pm kick-offs and two midweek rounds. For the first time in six years, Amazon Prime will have no Premier League rights meaning there will be two rather than three subscriptions for viewers to pay.

Insiders at broadcasters hope that fact plus the extra number of matches — every game not kicking off during the Saturday afternoon blackout will be available live — will cut the number of people using pirate streams to watch games.