I wonder how they settled on a price of £6.99. IMO that’s just absurdly high. I can’t imagine many people would pay it.

As long as they’re going to be filming it, there are some high fixed costs: mainly people. Camera operators, directors, sound people, people to do commentary, and so-on. Plus the crew needed to set things up and tear them down (basically like roadies for music shows). Given the high fixed costs, the bandwidth costs are going to be minimal, and the additional bandwidth costs are going to be pence per user.

Given that, you’d think they’d want as many users as possible, especially given that each user is another person’s eyes on the various ads: shirt sponsors, sponsors on advertising hoardings, etc.

To me, the smart thing to do would either be to let people watch the pre-season for free, hoping to convert some of those people into paying fans, and getting them to buy memberships or merch. If they really wanted to charge people, to offer the games just barely above a break-even price so that you get as many eyes on the sponsors as possible.

At £6.99 they’re going to turn away a lot of potential viewers, viewers who will easily be able to find a way to watch the game for free from a dodgy streaming site. Not only does that mean missed revenue, it also means people don’t have the habit of going to arsenal.com for arsenal match videos. It also means they miss out on “upselling” opportunities – like, convincing people who just watched an Arsenal match to buy a shirt from their favourite player, or getting people to get a digital membership, or whatever.

The only thing that explains it to me is that they want to convince people that Arsenal is a “premium product” that you have to pay premium prices for. So, even if they turn away 90% of potential viewers, everyone is left with the impression of Arsenal as a premium brand.