We appear to have a league game on Thursday.

[Herbert Augustus Chapman]

It could be the greatest sporting spectacle on earth, but if neither of them is 'your' team, it's not going to compare, is it?

whatsoever of the pleasure one derives from the visceral, almost sensual loathing one has for a rival's team. I will actually fork out a tenner on NOW TV to watch United in the hope of seeing them lose and if they establish a lead I'll switch off in disgust. I am a wretch

[Pokster]

The sort of people who are prepared to make 200-mile round trips to watch lower league football are going to do it whether the PL is on telly or not. Because they're basically mentally ill.
To an extent, my feeling is that that applies to anyone who'd even cross the road to watch 'their' awful team play awful football. Because it's not about the quality of the football, it's about who you support. And Man City vs. Liverpool is as remote to those people as Real Madrid v Barcelona is to us. It could be the greatest sporting spectacle on earth, but if neither of them is 'your' team, it's not going to compare, is it?

But not everyone who goes to a football match actually has either of those teams as their main team. plenty of people I know will go to watch a match on a weekend when their team is away as they want to watch a game. If their team was on TV then they wouldn't go, so attendances will suffer.

[redgunamo]

The matchday experience is fine, I think, so long as you actually want to enjoy going to football matches. So many different and often new, demands on everyone's time (and money) nowadays and football is just trying to compete, stay in the game, so to speak.

I've always felt that the restrictions on live TV coverage represent a rather shameful admission by the football authorities that - for all their talk about what a great 'product' it is - a significant percentage of football fans wouldn't bother attending live football if it weren't the only means of seeing the game.

That seems to me to suggest that they know just what a load of shít the 'matchday experience' really is.