Premier League clubs will earn at least £100m each from the new TV deal

When the Barclays Premier League member clubs learned the sheer scale of the staggering TV deal that will begin next season, they rightly thought that it would change the face of English football once again.

What they didn't expect was that, ultimately, it would put them at odds with their own supporters.

For many years now, as the scale and self-love of the Premier League has grown, those who attend games have paid heavily for the privilege.

Despite a huge increase in revenue thanks to the new TV deal, Premier League ticket prices continue to soar

Arsenal supporters faced the highest average season ticket prices for the 2015-16 campaign

The cheapest match-day ticket at Bayern Munich is £11, while English football fans pay nearly triple that

The cheapest average season ticket price in the Premier League comes in at a staggering £489

It has long been an irritant but the clubs justified it, albeit rather weakly, on the back of an argument that said the sight of many of the world's best players on our fields every weekend came at a price. Transfer values have to be met, wages (and agents) have to be paid.

The moment that Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore stood up in London last February and announced that clubs would share an astonishing £8billion from the 2016-2019 TV deal, however, that line of reasoning crashed to the floor.

HOW MUCH!? From next season every Premier Club will earn at least £100million thanks to the new TV deals, with the winners earning £150m Advertisement

Big English football clubs no longer need their supporters' money to pay their players' wages. They certainly don't need as much of it, if any at all.

The finances driving our clubs onwards and upwards comes from sponsorship, commerce and, above all, TV companies who seem happy to invest so very much of their viewers' subscription and licence fees into this product.

The debate about ticket prices has been with us for a while thanks to groups such as the Football Supporters Federation.

It is TV and all associated with it, however, that has driven our clubs to a point where there should no longer be a debate. Simply, there is no longer an argument to which they can cling.

The actions of Liverpool supporters at Anfield on Saturday have certainly helped to bring the issue in to sharper focus.

Liverpool fans recently staged a walkout protest against rising ticket prices in their match with Sunderland

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED £7.50 - Price of watching Newcastle at home 20 years ago Advertisement

Their 77th minute walk out in protest at prices (£77 was intended to be a new top-end ticket cost at the redeveloped Anfield) has already edged their club towards dialogue and the fact the club's manager Jurgen Klopp recently worked at a German side where two seasons ago match tickets were selling for as little as £9, has only added to the sense of embarrassment on Merseyside.

Liverpool are not alone, of course. They have just been a little unfortunate to have made their announcement at the time a storm was brewing. As as a result, they have found themselves in the eye of it.

No, across the country clubs have been pushing the envelope as far as they possibly can on ticket prices. It was inevitable that at some stage we would reach this point.

Stubbornness remains, of course, and it perhaps will do for a little longer yet. Only last week, for example, Sportsmail revealed how seven or eight Premier League clubs voted against a proposal to restrict the cost of away tickets to £30. As such, the vote fell short of the 14 hands that it needed to be carried.

As it stands, however, the clubs will reconvene in March and talk the issue through once more. By then it is likely that the environment will be a little different, the focus on that meeting a little sharper. It will be interesting to see if some of the dissenting clubs have reconsidered.

The growing inaccessibility of football is alienating fans, a far cry from the notion of a 'working man's game'

Already, one or two clubs have broken ranks to speak publicly on the issue. Their rivals in the Premier League will perhaps not thank West Ham or Stoke, for example, but the football community as a whole perhaps will.

Stoke and their Staffordshire owner and chairman Peter Coates have led the way for a while on this issue. Season prices have been kept down for some time now while coach travel to away games has been paid for by the club.

West Ham, meanwhile, claimed recently that they could have pitched season tickets at a higher level and still sold them.

'It will cost us about £5m,' co-owner David Sullivan told Sportsmail recently.

'Believe me, that won't make the difference between buying Cristiano Ronaldo and not buying him.

'Set against other revenues, ticket income is not as important as it once was.'

Observers may suggest that West Ham are about to move in to a new, larger, stadium at the Olympic Park that they haven't had to pay to build. It's a reasonable point.

West Ham co-chairman David Sullivan has admitted that ticket gate income is not as important as before

Sullivan said that gate receipts would not enable West Ham to sign Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid

Nevertheless, Sullivan's own point is moot and returns us to the heart of the issue, that being that our clubs charge these prices not because they need to be but because they can and they want to.

The average age of adults attending Premier League games is currently beyond 40 and maybe economic reasons are to blame. Maybe that is why some clubs – including Liverpool last week – refer to them as 'customers'.

In advance of the start of next season's competition, there stands a clear opportunity to change this. Nobody is asking our clubs to give tickets away, only to reflect more accurately on the means of those who have traditionally been the bedrock of the game.

On announcing the TV deal and hearing calls for change last year, Scudamore said: 'We're not set up for charitable purposes. We are set up to be the best football competition.'