'Premflix' and tourist fans - future of football predictions

TL;DR

A 1994 clip of football experts predicting the sport's future has resurfaced, revealing surprisingly accurate forecasts about fan culture and stadium access. Arsenal fanzine editor Mike Collins expressed disdain for the changes in football fandom.

Key points

1994 clip shows football experts making future predictions
Predictions included credit card entry to stadiums
Mike Collins is an Arsenal fanzine editor
Fans reacted with disbelief at the accuracy of some forecasts
Collins expressed disdain for changes in football fandom

Arsenal

"If this is the future of football, you can stuff it."

A clip from 1994 showing experts making predictions for where football would be in 10 years recently resurfaced on social media, and fans online cannot believe how prescient some of their forecasts proved to be.

Arsenal fanzine editor Mike Collins was part of the trio on the viral clip and - along with the disappearance of fanzines - he predicted credit card entry to stadiums, a decline in "hardcore support" and a rise in "glory hunters".

"I and all other old-style fans want no part of it at all," he said.

While not all predictions have come to fruition, some were on the money.

Neil Duncanson, a former broadcast executive, predicted that, "television will run football completely in the next century".

Meanwhile, Alex Fynn, an author and football consultant, divined that match-going fans would be seen by clubs as "incidental".

"If they are part of the equation, it will only be because television companies want them to provide the spectacular background, so that they can bring their pictures into millions of homes," he said.

These excerpts are taken from Standing Room Only, a BBC football programme that ran between 1991 and 1994.

BBC Sport caught up with Duncanson and Fynn to reflect on their Nostradamus moment - and get their take on where our national game will be 10 years from now.

'Not rocket science' to predict media landscape

In 1992, Sky won the rights to broadcast the newly established Premier League in a £304m five-year deal. Two years later, Duncanson predicted that the power broadcasters had over football would proliferate to an extent not yet seen.

"If you think television is too powerful in sport now, in 10 years' time you won't believe the control that they'll have," he said.

Duncanson also speculated that fans in 2004 would watch football through subscription and pay-per-view services.

"He'll watch it on his own local Newcastle cable station because the BBC or ITV won't be able to afford the rights to the game," he said.

"The cable operator will have paid a fortune for it, but he knows he'll get the money back from subscription.

"It's probably going to be done on pay-per-view, so you'll put a card and a number on your telephone, tap it in, five quid docked from your account, the game pops up."

More three decades on, subscription-funded broadcasters continue to be the gatekeepers of top-flight English football.

In 2023, the Premier League agreed a record four-year £6.7bn domestic television deal for Sky and TNT to show up to 270 live games a season from 2025-26.