Pub managers, landlords and landladies across Croydon have been forced to do some hurried new sums, as they face bills of £30,000 per year for a licence to show Premier League football on their bars’ televisions using Sky Sports.
Double your money: some pubs would need to sell an extra 2,000 pints a month to cover their increased Sky charges
And one popular back-street boozer, the Builders Arms on Leslie Park Road, has announced it will be pulling the plug on Sky from the end of next month.
Football on the telly is a proven and welcome business driver for pubs at a tough time for the hospitality industry. Sky Sports, which has the lion’s share of rights to Premier League matches, is planning on showing 100 more matches than ever before, with “at least” 215 live games scheduled for broadcast in the 2025-2026 season that has just started.
But to help them pay for that, Sky are squeezing publicans ever harder for the rights to show the games on their TVs.
Sky Sports football pub charges vary significantly, but can start from around £200 per month for commercial packages. Charges are assessed on the venue’s size, location and commercial tier. In a classic divide and conquer move, Sky does not publicise its pub prices, getting publicans to negotiate individual rates.
This year, some pubs have seen the fee for their annual package double, to around £30,000.
This is in addition to any other rights fees paid to other broadcasters, such as TNT Sports.
It is estimated that pubs would need to sell an extra 2,000 pints every month to pay for Sky’s increased football charge. The broadcasters have justified their fee hike to pay for their “increased investment” in showing more matches.
One pub pundit has warned that soon only the larger chains will be able to offer the chance to watch the game with a few mates and a couple of pints down the pub: “Any independent pub is getting priced out of the market by Sky’s prices,” they said.
Many pubs make less than a pound in profit per pint poured.
A nice, quiet pint: the Builders Arms is not renewing its Sky Sports deal
The charge hike could also see an increase in pirate streaming of games by some pubs: a publican in Wales was convicted of showing unlicensed Sky football coverage last year and fined £3,000 – one-tenth of the annual Sky fee.
One publican, who has seen his Sky bill soar by 129%, from £1,062 to £2,433, said he would not be renewing when his contract runs out: “That’s a ridiculous amount,” they said.
“On top of all the other rising costs like utilities and wages, it’s just not viable to pay a further £35,000 for the year for Sky Sports, when you include the VAT.”
One Croydon pub, the Builders Arms in Addiscombe, has recoiled in horror at the eye-wateringly high new bills from the satellite broadcaster.
In a message shared with their regulars this week, they said: “Unfortunately, from the end of September we will no longer be showing Sky.
“They want to charge us £30,000 per annum, making it no longer affordable for this small business.
“However, we will still be able to show any games broadcast on TNT. This includes most football cup competitions and 54 Premier League games.
“We are sorry for the inconvenience but we hope you can understand our situation.”
Not all boozers will be cutting off their satellite sport. Whelans, the big sports bar in South Croydon, and the Spread Eagle on Katharine Street, run by the same pubco, are both dominated by several widescreen TV sets showing some kind of sport all day and night. Neither pub has any plans to stop showing Sky football on their tellies.
Those Croydon pubs considering their options might want to look to the example of The Hope, in Carshalton, which has just been named as London’s Pub of the Year for the seventh time in 13 years. One of the reasons given for this pub’s enduring attraction? They don’t show any football and have no televisions in the bars.
And their budgets are £30,000 better off for it, too.
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good news for those of us who don’t want to be disturbed by noise of sport on TV