Same league. Same matches. Very different prices. Outrage erupted on social media after the Premier League unveiled its Premier League+ platform in conjunction with StarHub, allowing football fans in Singapore to access all 380 matches across the season for the equivalent of £23.55 ($32) per month — while supporters in the United Kingdom pay more than double that, without even having access to every match.

To access coverage of England’s top flight in the country where it is actually played, football fans in the UK can expect to pay more than £50 per month. Hop over to the Republic of Ireland and it is the same scenario, or you can add a Premier Sports subscription to watch games not broadcast on British channels for a total of £62.44. Think that’s bad? Premier League supporters in Iceland are charged the equivalent of £87.77 per month for a subscription to Syn Sports — all this while TOD TV subscribers in Turkey can access beIN Sport’s coverage for £3.52 per month.

The Athletic has compiled just how much football fans across the globe can be expected to pay to watch the Premier League across the coming season — a league with nearly two billion followers worldwide. Of the 84 broadcast deals the Premier League has for the 2025-28 period, only countries where subscriptions were published directly from the listed broadcaster or a verified sub-seller were included in the study, with promotional or new customer deals excluded.

The raw cost, country by country

At face value, the headline prices vary wildly. In Iceland, Syn Sports commands £87.77 per month. The Republic of Ireland’s combined Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Premier Sports package hits £62.44, while Sweden’s Viaplay comes in at £61.79 and Denmark’s at £58.83. The United Kingdom sits at around £51 for Sky Sports and the TNT package — without all 380 matches.

At the other end of the spectrum, Turkey’s beIN Sports via a TOD TV subscription costs just £3.52 a month. Romania and Slovakia offer CANAL+ coverage for £5.12 and £8.55 respectively, Bulgaria’s Diema Sport on Nova Broadcast costs £6.84, and Indonesia’s Vidio Ultimate £7.19.

The true value picture: burden on income

‘I had best move to Turkey or Romania’, you might be thinking — especially if you are reading this from Iceland, Sweden or Denmark. After all, a two-year subscription to Turkey’s beIN would still be cheaper than a month of Iceland’s Syn. But hold on, because £87.77 in Iceland does not quite equate to what £87.77 would get you in Turkey.

When calculating how much a subscription costs in comparison to a country’s average income, the prices paid across Europe are not quite as contrasting as the plain figures suggest. Turkey does retain the best value, with a £3.52 monthly sum (229 Turkish lira) and a £42.24 annual bill (2,748 lira) equating to just 0.44 per cent of the country’s average income.

The UK sits much closer to the bottom of the value-for-money chart, with the minimum annual bill of £612 accounting for 1.71 per cent of the country’s average income of £35,822 (as of 2024). But that comes without the hidden costs UK supporters face. They must also purchase a TV Licence priced at £180 per year to watch live television — and even then, paying for both Sky and TNT Sports still does not make every Premier League match accessible.

Only a guaranteed 267 games are available to watch, due to the 3pm blackout that remains in the UK, a figure likely to rise throughout the season as matches are moved away from the 3pm slot due to European and domestic competition commitments. This makes the 1.71 per cent burden of a UK-based subscription worse value than the identical burden in Sweden, where Viaplay streams 360 of the 380 matches.

Iceland still isn’t ideal, with a 1.82 per cent burden figure — but that is nothing on Albania. DigiAlb’s £306.96 yearly subscription would swallow nearly five per cent of the country’s £6,838 average income, the equivalent of a football fan in the UK paying an annual subscription of nearly £1,800.

Annual burden rankings (subscription cost as share of income)

1. Turkey 0.44%
2. Netherlands 0.44%
3. Czechia 0.46%
4. Romania 0.47%
5. Malta 0.56%
6. Slovakia 0.58%
7. Germany 0.63%
8. Austria 0.64%
9. Bulgaria 0.73%
10. Croatia 0.83%
11. Belgium 0.89%
12. Switzerland 0.92%
13. Norway 0.92%
14. France 0.92%
15. Estonia 0.97%
16. Finland 1.08%
17. Spain 1.08%
18. Poland 1.18%
19. Italy 1.20%
20. Latvia 1.27%
21. Denmark 1.30%
22. Ireland 1.30%
23. Portugal 1.36%
24. Andorra 1.48%
25. Greece 1.57%
26. United Kingdom 1.71%
27. Sweden 1.71%
28. Iceland 1.82%
29. Albania 4.79%

Calculation: Annual subscription cost ÷ PPP GNI per capita × 100. Data as of 2024, from World Bank.