The ways we watch football in 2024 – and how it changes the experience

The final day of the Premier League season is a battle of televisions, radios, notifications, streams, group chats and misinformation.

Arsenal fans will be keeping an ear out for any news from the Etihad Stadium that means they could still win the Premier League. City fans, if they are being held to a draw by West Ham United, will be concerned about what happens in north London.

While many supporters of these clubs will be watching from inside the stadium, plenty of others will be stuck at home. They’ll watch the games on television, stream it on Sky Go, find another route to watching it or — for certain fans — listen on the radio.

But each of these experiences comes with their own pitfalls and problems. Anything streamed will involve delays because of the nature of the internet. Fans might hear neighbours screaming or be inundated with messages before anything happens on their screen. Radio can be hard to parse. And for those with no route to watch it, waiting for highlights could be impossible on a day like Sunday.

To set us up for that experience, The Athletic heard from a range of people consuming Tuesday’s title-defining match between Tottenham Hotspur and City on different platforms. They reported back on the reality of each one — and how it colours their outlook on the game.

Watching on Sky Sports (via satellite)

“No, you can’t have Bluey on… Why? Because Daddy is watching the football.

“It’s for work… Yes, it’s work… it’s nearly your bedtime anyway. Don’t touch that remote…”

Yes, the chance to watch a big live game is pretty rare, given the family TV is dominated by a six-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother, obsessed by Sing 2, Disney+ and incredibly irritating YouTube videos.

In fact, a costly subscription to Sky Sports — the main UK home of the Premier League since its launch more than 30 years ago — is maintained more for cricket and golf, which are usually broadcast when they are at school (on in the background, boss) or asleep.

So the opportunity to watch a consequential contest from the comfort of the sofa was most enjoyable and actually quite relaxing.

It came with a few too many slick pre-match video packages, far too much discussion from the pundits about Spurs not letting City win (we never thought they would, guys) and a disappointing lack of self-parody Roy Keane, but there was a welcome pre-match cameo from Sky veteran Martin Tyler and, crucially, the sense that it was happening live — no risk of buffering, no delay and no fears of social media delivering spoilers.

Oh, and I must remember to set up a series link for House of the Dragon. Thanks for the reminder, Kelly Cates.

Steve Madeley

Watching on Sky Sports (via Sky Go — while avoiding social media)

iPhone out at 8pm on the dot, knowing the game wasn’t going to start on Sky Go until one minute later, after a quick Matalan ad. I’m happy living in a world of blissful (marginally delayed) ignorance, with fashion advice thrown in.

You can minimise the action and keep it on your screen whilst scrolling away on socials in an act of spoiler self sabotage, but why bother? Watching on a screen 15cm by 7.5cm is already small enough.

Subtitles are easily selected with commentator Peter Drury waxing lyrical in white text, Gary Neville ‘Ooooo’-ing in yellow and Jamie Carragher ‘there’-ing in blue. There are more advanced features if you’re multi-tasking, like propping up your phone against a mug, whilst doing the washing-up, or as Aston Villa’s John McGinn flagged in a post-match interview, at the club’s end of season do. It was probably resting on a bottle of Champagne there.

First chance went to Rodrigo Bentancur and Drury’s excitement made my nearby son scurry over with a “What happened?” No waiting for the slo-mo replay, just a tap of the 10 seconds back option and he could watch it unfold ‘as live’. Job done.

If the eery, pandemic-like atmosphere inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium left you drifting off at any point, there’s another clever thing: ‘Recap’. Click the tab and a mini-highlights list appears — like ‘Haaland goal’ or ‘Son chance’ — at the bottom of the screen, so you’re up to speed before the live action resumes (after a quick ad for poolside summer fits).

Adam Leventhal

Watching on Sky Sports (via Sky Go — with social media checks)

My return flight from Stockholm to Heathrow was delayed by 45 minutes which meant I faced a frantic race against time to make it home for kick-off.

I wanted to watch all of the build-up but I burst through the door 15 minutes before the game started. I immediately turned on my Playstation 5, loaded up the Sky Go app and raided the cupboard for snacks.

I know all about the danger that watching a game on Sky Go brings. Armed with this knowledge, I turned my phone face down for the opening 20 minutes to avoid any spoilers. An injury to Brentford’s club-record signing Igor Thiago complicated matters as I had to pick up my phone to write about the news.

A fan watching a game on Sky Go (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

I saw a flurry of messages from a WhatsApp group but it turned out to be a false alarm. My mum then called and I pretended I was not secretly watching the game but my reaction to Bentancur’s flying tackle on Phil Foden probably gave me away.

When Erling Haaland opened the scoring, I resisted checking social media but I had to take a look when Stefan Ortega saved Son Heung-min’s shot. Part of the fun of football is sharing messages with your friends and it was a strange experience watching one of the biggest games of the season but actively ignoring everyone.

Jay Harris

Watching on an illegal stream

So my mate has a mate whose dad has a mate who can get you a ‘dodgy box’ — that is, for the uninitiated, a modified streaming device with a live feed of every channel you could ever want to watch pre-loaded onto it, all for a modest annual fee.

Yes, this is illegal. Yes, it contravenes the eighth commandment of ‘thou shalt not steal’, but I always took that as more of a reference to thy neighbour’s ox rather than his intellectual property.

You get what you pay for, in any case. There is occasional buffering, a reasonable delay, and you quickly learn that checking Twitter or chatting over WhatsApp during a game is a privilege reserved for upstanding, law-abiding members of society.

So, the usual rules apply: set your phone to ‘Do Not Disturb’ and resist the temptation to check it. If only it were that easy. In what could be described as an act of karmic retribution, the first thing I saw from a quick glance at Twitter at the start of the second half was a stream of ‘1-0 Haaland’ tweets.

I chanced another flick through later and had a feeling something significant was about to happen long before Son Heung-min ran through on Ortega’s goal. Thankfully, what I saw had kept things sufficiently vague.

Still, I’d spoiled the game’s two defining moments for myself. And if anybody from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit is reading this, let’s agree that is punishment enough.

Anonymous

Watching on USA Network

For over a decade, NBCUniversal has been the stateside home of the Premier League.

It’s a well-oiled machine at this stage: the bumper music remains unchanged, the graphics keep up with the league’s own branding codes, and the desk of pundits is well-established. No feed cuts, no audio/video mishmash. One adjusts to the quirks of a London-accented presenter coming out of commercials with a read not for the weekend’s upcoming fixtures, but to clue viewers in to the impending NFL schedule release.

What the broadcast giant — which aired the game on USA Network, a basic cable channel, rather than flagship commercial broadcast network NBC — can’t equate for is the requisite match delay.

Tim Howard is an analyst for NBC’s Premier League coverage (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Modern mobile apps are in a race to update you on a match’s happenings as soon as possible. The result is that one learns about the decisive goal a full 24 seconds before it shows on the broadcast. Unless you go into the app to mute notifications (a 10-second task, to be fair), it also kills the suspense in every ensuing sequence.

All the same, it was a sharp day of commentary for Jon Champion, and a typical ‘Premier League on NBC’ production.

Jeff Rueter

Listening on the radio

“Can I have your phone to see the team news, Dad?” asks my 12-year-old son.

“No, wait for John Murray to tell us,” I respond.

“But I need to check my fantasy team players are in — is Alvarez playing?” Arggggggggggh.

I’m a BBC Radio 5 Live fanboy and despite having a Sky sub — mainly for the golf, cricket and rugby league — I regularly take my football in through the radio. As a sports journalist who works on football, mainly the Premier League, I find watching it a busman’s holiday and believe the radio and the pictures the commentators and reporters paint with their words add to the experience.

“There’s been a goal at Goodison” and the nerves ramp up for my eldest with his blue blood as we wait to hear who has scored. Tuesday night was no different, with dad-taxi services in full swing with 5 Live confined to flashes from Tottenham.

The cross to Tottenham after the opening Haaland goal was filled with tension — and Murray delivered, as he always does.

I’m sure most people reading this will think I’m mad, my sons do, but give me 5 Live Sport on a Saturday any time, rather than watching others screech inanely watching a TV. If I’m not at a game that is — nothing will ever beat going. And for those watching — remember, the radio is always more up to date than TV. Don’t even start me on a buffering stream…

Craig Chisnall

Ignoring the score — and watching the highlights

It felt bizarre waiting for highlights, cooking in a silent flat, oblivious of Erling Haaland’s double.

My Tottenham-supporting mate texted our group chat pre-game — “BLUE MOON, COME ON CITEH” — but with score notifications off, my phone was quiet during the match.

Having unthinkingly opened then immediately closed Twitter and my FPL page, it was safe to open Sky Sports’ YouTube channel at 10.30pm.

There were two nice angles of a Guglielmo Vicario save, artful transitions between incidents, and audio overlapping with no obvious dissonance.

Consuming games on YouTube is a very different experience (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Replays of Haaland’s first goal let me scrutinise Van de Ven’s positional mis-step and De Bruyne’s perfectly timed run — video paused; narrowly onside — all nuances you could have missed at the game.

Jamie Carragher’s ‘Arsenal fans two-footing the television’ line superimposed over Pep Guardiola’s ridiculous touchline flop was brilliant, too.

Overall, it’s a decent, smoothly edited option to see goals and chances if you’ve missed the game. But the experience ultimately felt unsatisfying, like eating ice cream for dinner.

An authentic sense of atmosphere, ebb and flow, the joy on the face of Mikey Moore, 16, making his senior debut… You’ll miss all that when the game is distilled to just 180 seconds.

Max Mathews

(Top photo: Getty Images)