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?