I don't know about you but I feel like I've hardly had a break from football so far this year.
The World Cup was won just 24 days ago, yet the seasons upon us already with the football league kicking off as early as 7:30 on Friday as Blackburn take on Cardiff. That's less than a months grace, yet Southampton have almost managed to sell an entire starting eleven in that time!
That said, I remain focused and undaunted at the task ahead of me this season. I have a week to prepare and decide upon, before changing my mind and having to re-decide my fantasy football side for the various work and mates leagues I will join.
I've also got time to consider my season long bets, trying to come up with that magical result of the winner of all 4 leagues that will return a figure with many zero's.
And I've also got some time to write another article or two before the season starts and so I thought I'd start with this one, a look at the associated costs of being an Armchair Supporter over the coming 10 months of action - because it's not cheap you know.
TV Packages
An Armchair Supporter cannot survive on simply BBC and ITV alone, he must have the assistance of Sky Sports and possibly BT Sport... I've yet to decide whether I want to pay good money in order to listen to Michael Owen distress me... but for the purpose of this lets assume we're going for both subscriptions.
So Sky Sports will cost you £43.50 a month http://www.sky.com/quickbuy/new (new customer discount not included).
In return you get a shit load of football plus cricket, F1, the NFL and lots more. The downside is you also get all those crap programmes the missus will want to watch, but that should at least earn you some Brownie points, important if you plan on watching at least 3 full games over each weekend.
Then, if you do want the option to watch the additional 38 Premier league matches, 24 FA Cup matches plus Europa and Scottish Premier Leagues you'll need to add £12 per month on top of that to get BT Sport (http://sport.bt.com/pages/sport/).
Sustenance
So we're off to an expensive start already, yet this is just the cost to watch the blooming stuff, this doesn't include the essentials you need to go alongside the watching of football, food and drink.
With this blog not being that successful (yet) and having not had a meaningful pay rise for years in my day job, I wanted to keep the costs to a bare minimum so I've simply looked at the cost of two 15 packs of beers and a big multi pack (14) of McCoys man crisps which I estimate, if only used during football watching would last about a month - that's about a packet of crisps a game and two beers for a week of watching 3 to 4 games.
Fortunately Sainsburys have two packs of a range of beers on offer at a cost of £18 (Link to drink promotion) and with the crisps costing £4, that means we're looking at another £22 per month, assuming I 'drink responsibly'!
Vices
We all have a vice or two, but the ones I'm particularly on about here is smoking and gambling, both things I do far too much of.
I'd like to thin the gambling plays for itself over time, which is obviously far from the truth but for the basis of this I'm going to suggest a cost of £20 a month to cover one of these activities - but I should probably have doubled that figure!
Watching away from home
Every now and then I will get the urge to venture outside, not just for a fleeting cigarette, but to enjoy the company of my fellow man at a drinking establishment to watch a game of football. To bask in the peculiar sights, sounds and smells that a crappy pub and a group of football fans can bring.
Obviously after I've done that and witnessed some drunk geezer bang on about how great Liverpool were in the 80's and why Jordan Henderson is the greatest thing since sliced bread I will remember why I preferred to watch games at home, but if we say I did this once a month at a cost of 4 pints and a meal of steak and chips, we're easily looking at an extra £25 a month.
Monthly Cost Summary
Luckily a season lasts 10 months, so the maths is reasonably easily here. So to cover off we have;
£55.50 TV Subscriptions
£22.00 Food and Drink
£20.00 Additional naughtiness
£25.00 Escaping the missus
---------
£122.50 per month x 10 = a staggering £1,225 for the season!
To put this into context, you could get a top price season ticket at one of Manchester City (£860), Liverpool (£869) or Manchester United (£950) and almost Chelsea (£1,250)!
Conclusion
It's not fecking cheap is it, this football obsession of ours!
The other thing to realise is the basic figure above was a conservative estimate and doesn't include one off or ad hoc costs such as your teams new shirt (at least £50) a new telly (anywhere upwards of £400) and flowers / chocolates / meals out for the other-half to keep her sweet through the season (£1,000's!)
The overall price could actually be equivalent to the most expensive season ticket this year of £2,013 - well done Arsenal fans you've won something this season.
So maybe this should be a stark eye opener for fans that rejoice in the news that their club has signed an inexperienced left back for £27 million, because whether it's by going to the game, watching it on TV or buying products from companies that pay top dollar to associate themselves with football, we will end up meeting that cost in some way regardless of what some rich oligarch or Sheik may tell you.
Maybe a cup of coco and watching Match of the Day at a cost of surely no more than £200 a season is the way to go?!?
The Armchair Supporter
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