I can safely say from the perspective of a student that no one in my age bracket that I know watches football games in a legal way.
Most watch on streaming sites, I’m not the biggest fan of those but people stream games on Twitter nowadays, I’ll admit I watched this game through Twitter, thought it would be better than City v Luton.
(Not going to say what Twitter page I use I’m not sure what forum rules are and not risking it)
I know a fair few people with dodgy boxes and sticks as well, I personally thought we’d see a movement towards a change in Premier League football coverage, was expecting someone like Amazon to make a big bid for it permanently. Was convinced the ability to stream football games would be the future but it seems not.
Despite what feels like the whole world moving to illegal streaming, it very much still seems to be profitable for these companies and still the prices will continue. Look at Skys massive bid for the next EPL TV rights.
Even boxing, where prices are getting very high, is still profitable. Look at the YouTuber boxing ****. KSI Vs Tommy Fury had 1.3 million PPV buys. I know a lot of people who watched that (for some insane reason, not my cup of tea) and not a single one purchased it legally, yet 1.3 million people did.
TV companies are still getting profit for showing these sports, so I don’t actually expect to see any change for a while
Thing is, as you mentioned about the 1.3m viewers (legally), these 1.3m could well be made up of those who stream them for a price.
I am far from saying I am a "reseller" as they're called or a "broadcaster" or whatever, and I will confess I bought a "package" many years ago (haven't since), but let's put it this way.
If I had a network that had 1,000 people paying me £10 or whatever it is a month these days, I've made £10,000 a month (how these people hide it I'll never know). I would quite happily spend £500 on "several" PPV subs to ensure I could stream to my "customers". If one fails, another link would always be available.
So that one provider has bought about 10 subs. How many providers are out there?
Then you have the actual legit purchases too.
I manage a bookmaker, so I can see plenty of games for nothing anyway (legally). And my local pub has some of the minor games on the TV. Never advertises, just on in the back. Sometimes it's nice to go back there and watch some football on a cold, windy, day off.
I also have family in America and in other countries in Europe who I know have subs to various streaming places. I know it's technically wrong, I've not purchased anything, so if I'm not at the pub, I know there login details and have permission from them, using a VPN, to use it. But that is extremely rare to be honest.