Irish fans paying second-highest price in Europe for Premier League accessSky Sports hold four of the five Premier League rights packages for the UK and Ireland. Photograph: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images Fri Aug 21 2026 - 15:03 • 5 MIN READWatching the Premier League in Ireland is a uniquely expensive business.Ireland is the only country in Europe – and, with Pakistan and Bangladesh, one of only three across the world – in which viewers have to pay for at least three separate subscriptions to watch all of the Premier League games made available for broadcast. To make you wince a little further: Ireland is one of just eight EU countries whose people have to fork out for more than one subscription to watch games. A recent analysis by the Athletic found that at €74 per month, Irish fans are paying the second-highest price in Europe for Premier League access. Iceland is the most expensive, where viewers are coughing up €102.49 every month to a single broadcaster. No wonder Heimir Hallgrímsson is happy to base himself here.Irish viewing costs are chiefly a consequence of geography. Ireland is included in the UK rights deal with Sky and TNT, while Irish viewers have access to the Saturday 3pm kick-offs through Premier Sports as the UK continues to observe the blackout rule to protect lower-league attendances.The rights to the Premier League in the UK and Ireland are sold in five separate packages, four of which are currently held by Sky. A individual broadcaster is forbidden from holding all of the rights under a 2006 European Commission ruling known as the “no single buyer” directive, a piece of competition law that has continued to apply post-Brexit. The issue here is the bulk of viewers do not subscribe to watch the Premier League, but rather to watch their favourite team. For the loyal fan, it’s akin to screening different episodes of Game of Thrones or Succession across Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. It is galling for Irish viewers to look around the world and see farther-flung Premier League fans paying significantly less for more. American viewers can pay the equivalent of €11.09 per month to access every game on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock. (Irish fans now get access to all games aside from the 3pm Saturday games not shown on Premier.) Chris Cashen, head of strategy at media marketing agency WPP, says the costs for Irish fans are high because that’s the cost of doing business for broadcasters. “It’s not necessarily the broadcasters fault,” he says. “They have to pay huge money on broadcast rights, and they are going up all the time. It is costly to buy and costly to broadcast, so it is adequately priced and it is not price-gouging. What used to be a working-class sport is now [targeting] a high socio-economic demographic, and that’s across the board, if you are buying a jersey or buying tickets. It is becoming unattainable and inaccessible.”Sky Sports pundits Micah Richards and Ian Wright speak with Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta ahead of a Premier League fixture against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park in May. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images For Premier League With Premier League clubs all in private hands, the league’s governing principle is to increase revenue and improve clubs’ valuation, and their present riches are built on the cost of their broadcast rights. The most recent UK and Irish rights deal was worth €7.86 billion across four seasons, while the clubs are now making approximately the same from the totality of their international rights. “Clubs are owned by overseas owners, so they will inflate the asset value,” says Cashen. He agrees that the monthly cost of watching the Premier League is driving Irish viewers to cheaper and illegal means of access. It is difficult to find accurate data for the prevalence of dodgy box or IPTV use in Ireland, partly for the reason that it is so rampant.The broadcast industry is reluctant to publish what data they have lest it encourage compliant subscribers to buy a dodgy box under the impression that there may be safety in numbers. The statistic quoted most often is from a 2025 Sunday Independent poll which found that one-in-five Irish households admitted to using a dodgy box, which represents approximately 400,000 people. Anti-piracy firm MUSO do not track dodgy-box use in Ireland, but they do monitor visits to websites which host pirated content. Across a 12-month period to June 2026, Irish users made a total of 268 million visits to these sites, with just over 50 per cent doing so to illegally watch movies and TV shows. Streams of live sport accounted for 9 per cent of the total visits. That said, Irish people are generally more willing to pay for services than their European counterparts. Around 53 per cent of Irish adults pay for Spotify or an equivalent music streaming service, well above the EU average of 25 per cent. One fifth of the Irish population pay for news services, which is 5 per cent above the European average. When it comes to Premier League football, the difference is cost and perceptions of consequence. A survey by the BeStreamWise website found that 42 per cent of respondents in Ireland believed illegal streaming carried little or no serious consequence. The broadcast industry is clamping down aggressively on their use, and focus has thus far been on dodgy-box suppliers rather than individual users.Sky intends to take legal action against individual dodgy-box users. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images In July 2024, Naas Circuit Criminal Court sentenced Ciaran Donovan – a Kildare-based operator of King Kong Media, an illegal streaming service – to three years and four months in prison, with the final two years suspended. A year later, the High Court ordered David Dunbar from Co Wexford to pay €480,000 in damages to Sky for operating an illegal streaming service.Through this investigation, Sky were able to identify approximately 200 of his customers to whom they sent cease and desist letters. Sky intends to take legal action against any individual dodgy-box user who ignores a series of these letters.In Italy, meanwhile, the law has been changed to allow for fines, starting from €154, to be levied directly on dodgy-box users. Irish lawmakers are yet to follow suit. Irish football is another loser to Premier League piracy. Dodgy boxes generally include access to LOITV, which the FAI says has cost the association around €1 million in lost subscriptions, the same value as the total revenue from the service in 2025. Cashen points to Irish consumers’ compliance in paying for music and news to argue that Irish fans would move away from dodgy boxes if the Premier League became more affordable. But with clubs continuing to attract investors who believe there is more money to be made in English football, he says he can’t see the status quo changing anytime soon.One way in which it could change, he says, would be if the clubs took control of rights to their matches and sold them directly to fans via their own platforms, such as MUTV or LFCTV. This might be a false economy for the clubs, however, given the Premier League’s strength is its competitiveness, which stems from everyone selling rights and getting rich together. There is no general trend in this direction, either. Barcelona and Real Madrid used to sell the TV rights to their own games, but a 2016 law in Spain forced La Liga rights to be sold collectively.Rather than the cost of watching the Premier League in Ireland dropping significantly anytime soon, it is more likely that club owners will point to Ireland as an example of why the costs should eventually be raised in the US and elsewhere around the world.IN THIS SECTION