well the post I read and quoted said that it would affect actual attendance of matches in the PL
As for the lower leagues - I think the average EPL fan disconnected from their local teams a long time ago. I guess you're probably right that attendance for them from teams who follow bigger clubs have gone down since the Sky era
My point is really that watching games live on tv does not actually fully replicate the experience of watching your team live and as a result there will always be a core of people wanting to attend the matches in person (which has actually grown since Sky have successfully raised the profile of the product)
All it really does is allow greater access and advertise the product better
As for the local teams who used to get a secondary support from fans of bigger clubs - I really don't know about that, my local teams are Fulham, Brentford and QPR..... I know Brentford's average attendances are approx double what they were when I was young but then they're now more successful and up in the Championship
I couldn't comment about the likes of Barnet or Enfield as I really don't know but I would have thought that their respective deals and money from the football league tv rights deals probably replicates or even exceeds the amount of money they would have been getting from extra fans who don't really support them but go to matches when they can't watch their epl team live (because now days there is so much more to do than go to watch football anyway, so if people aren't watching their own team they probbaly have other plans instead of watching the local team)
But who knows, I don't have the stats or projected stats to comment. I just remember watching a program about the start of the sky/epl era and that attendances actually steadily rose despite the expectation that crowds would dip due to tv access, and if you look at EPL games today, regardless of the fact there is more access than ever to football on the telly (and tickets more expensive than ever) demand for tickets has also never been higher and I'm sure that would continue to be the case even if you could buy a tv season ticket for your clubs games or watch any and all epl games like the Americans can for the right package
As I said, tv will never fully replicate the live match day experience
