How Sky are killing the tradition of watching football together: Simon Bird's struggle to watch the match in the pub
Monday night, 8.10pm, and I've just walked past empty pub after empty pub.
Surely somewhere, just three miles from St James' Park, there will be an ale house showing Newcastle United's first game back in the Premier League?
Up my high street, and a scene, by many accounts repeated up and down the country, the age old tradition of popping out to the local to watch the match seems to be dying out.
We've got eight pubs within easy walking distance of my house, just north of Newcastle city centre. One hadn't bothered to open or has closed down. Six had not invested in Sky Sports and were a sad sight, no more than a couple of punters nursing pints in front of Sky Sports freeview news service.
The one high street pub that was showing the match was rammed full, no room to get to the bar.
A few years back virtually every pub on my high street would be full of fans choosing to make the experience of watching their local team a communal experience rather than sit at home. There was banter, extreme opinions, shared joy and pain. It was the next best thing to being in the stadium.
So what has happened since? True, the recession is keeping boozers indoors drinking cheap booze from supermarkets.
But perhaps most controversially the hefty price Sky charge pubs for their sports channels are killing off the tradition of footy watching in the pub.
Eventually we retreated back home, missed the first 15 minutes of the match, and at half time got a lift two miles up the road to find a watering hole that wasn't packed out.
Four pints and a thumping defeat for Newcastle later, we wondered if it was time to start worrying about what the future holds for our traditional local pubs.
If you can't afford Sky's extortionate commercial rates, and it seems most can't, and you can't fill your boozer on the first night of the Premier League season, what hope have many of these establishments got of surviving?
We all want a choice of pleasant pubs on our doorstep serving decent beer with a relaxed and friendly atmosphere with a bit of sport to watch. But in the current climate pubs are badly on the slide and Sky should take note.
It is not just Newcastle's problem. It is nationwide. Sky's charges are a massive problem.
For example Chris Higgins, landlord at the Trafford Arms, Norwich told his local paper that he has already cancelled his deal to show Sky Sports games from September.
The figures involved are terrifying. He revealed: "Sky was asking for about £3000 more a year to show the matches. That means it would cost me £18,000 a year to show the season's games, just with Sky. I have had Sky in the pub since it started, which is a long time, but in the current financial climate I cannot afford it. When it started I was just paying £30 a season to Sky to show the matches."
Will Mr Higgins, or others like him around the country, be able to make £18,000 extra profit simply from having Sky Sports showing the Premier League and some Norwich games? It seems not.
Sky say it is a "commercial decision" to invest in Sky Sports because it "generates revenue" and is "good for business".
They say they spend £1 billion a year "to put more than 40,000 hours of top-quality sport on the screen" but admit prices have risen for pubs after a two year freeze because of "increased production and rights costs."
So once again as money gets pumped in to football, and gets eaten up by player wages and silly transfer fees, fans and businesses lower down the chain get to pay the price.
If the bubble has burst for many pubs who are calculating that it's not worth it because of the price, how long before fans start to make a similar calculation and start to miss matches, stop buying merchandise and home tv subscriptions?
If the football industry doesn't start treating it's customers better, from pub landlords to individual fans, the empty pubs in my high street who've given up on the game will be just the start of the game's decline.
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