[Misc] Would you pay £40 a year for ad-free sports writing from the likes of Andy Naylor?

Brighton Lines said:

I don't think it is.

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It really is. It's like saying Sam Hoskins is a top footballer.

Absolutely not because his ‘analysis’ is often just a ****ing description with a closing comment that points out the obvious.

I quite enjoy his analysis but I’m just as happy to read Owen’s musings. I doubt I’d pay though

Bozza said:

Seems very likely that Andy Naylor will be part of The Athletic's forthcoming UK launch.

Would you pay £40 per year for ad-free Premier League coverage from a group of top writers?

https://www.northstandchat.com/showthread.php?373820-Andy-Naylor-is-leaving

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Only if they change its name to The Anorak

I don't have particular animosity toward Andy Naylor. Some of his fan-baiting doesn't really feel that much different to some of our fans reaction to other fans - if he was a poster on here he'd be one of those that regularly throw the term 'bedwetter' around at anyone, regardless of how structured and considered and reasonable a criticism was made; the sort of fan who groups comments like 'I'm a little disappointed that we weren't able to convert that pressure into a goal that would have given us the win' with those like 'OMFG! We shud b stufing teh top6 team 5-0 houghton out! hope that player that let us down breaks his leg!' as if the latter is more representative the fan base/critical parts of the fan base than the former.


I wonder what the results would be without the link to Andy Naylor. As Bozza has already noted (though not until after people started to criticise Naylor's work), Naylor is producing what his employers want him to (if he only had to write 'nailed it' once a week and nothing else to distract him, and was given as much space as needed to say what he wanted to rather than being restricted to a couple of hundred words to fit into a sidebar, who knows how good it can be).

If it was just 'would you spend £40 a year on ad-free sports writing', my answer would be no. I do spend somewhere in that region for ad-free writing and journalism focused on pro-wrestling, but that is because that sort of work for the quality I access, isn't readily available in the mainstream. Every national newspaper devotes pages to football writing. We have multiple tv shows built around in-depth discussion of the big issues in football, a 24hr sports news channel (that only ever does fluff pieces on pro-wrestling to promote shows/ppvs on their other channels). I enjoy the games of football, I'm not interested enough in reading about football that I would pay for access to the articles, irrespective of who is doing the writing.

Albion Robster said:

I’d actually prefer to pay for Brian Owen’s pieces than Naylor’s.
Naylor has become lazy and bitter towards the Albion; especially taking cheap shots at Albion fans on Twitter last season. Most of his written articles are just quotes from news conferences and player interviews...which is what most reporters and writers do but I expect more from Naylor, especially conducting research on players & teams and tactical analysis pre and post game.

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Last year he wrote nearly fifty - 900 word post match analysis pieces.
In the paper there's tactical breakdowns of teams before every game.

The Blizzard is 20/40 quid a year and it's just wonderful.

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Presumably it will be £3.50 a month or something similar to let people pay (more than) £40 so that it doesn't seem such a lot for some writing. At that cost it doesn't feel that bad.

Sorrel said:

Presumably it will be £3.50 a month or something similar to let people pay (more than) £40 so that it doesn't seem such a lot for some writing. At that cost it doesn't feel that bad.

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Unlikely. Their US pricing is $9.99 a month. However, if you commit and pay for a year up front you get a big discount on that.