Not meant to be a wind up but I've just been reading this
http://tinyurl.com/3jjqj4r from When Saturday Comes and it started me thinking, how many teams does television need?
Imagine a world where TV companies formed a worldwide league of top teams who continually played against each other and only against each other with all the games being televised. If all of the clubs played one match a week then twenty clubs would provide ten matches a week which may well be all that television requires. Of course it would have to be a global league reflecting the importance of the market so you could perhaps have five teams each from North America, South America, Asia (including Australia) and Europe. Five teams from Europe would mean one at the most from the UK, probably Man United.
There would be no television revenue for other teams and no exposure on television so what would happen to the game? Fewer supporters would turn out to watch their local team (those that were left) and any sense of glamour games would be gone. The trophies competed for would seem pretty unimportant. Meanwhile the streets would be full of people wearing Man United, Barcelona or New York Mets shirts (available exclusively through the franchise) who had never seen a live game.
Hopefully it will never come to that but I believe we are moving that way and if we become over dependent on television then the day is coming when a huge number of clubs will find themselves crippled and will either go out of existence or be a shadow of themselves. Non league Cardiff, Non league Leicester, Non league Newcastle, Non league Spurs.
The clubs need to prepare themselves for this and the only way it can be done is to depend on fans turning up for games. I would think that the most that can be hoped for from attendences is in the region of £10 million to £15 million per season for most clubs so that means an end to the big transfers and high wages (you must be paying in total £1.5 to £2 million for Miller alone for example and Bellamy would cost £5 million without a huge cut in wages). Maybe the new system that is being introduced next season will help but we could be in for a worrying time for all our clubs.