It's an interesting debate mate. However the 1bn acounts for lots of pubs etc that show games. Many of those people are also paying much much less than the price point of even £10 p/a.
The break even point is around 25m subscribers. In the UK, Sky has 9m, Amazon 8m, Netflix around 12.5. Subtract 10% for Scotland (as they won't get the same watches their or NI) and the higher end product there is Netflix with 11m ish. I'll be frank, the PL would do well to match Netflix who are a hugely succesful company.
Then you consider say North America, DAZN has done similar with boxing, at a similar price point. Boxing may well be bigger and have a more established and loyal following their, and they are under 1million subscribers. Even if they matched Netflix and DAZN, they are still well under the 50% mark to match what they currently get. In the middle of a severe recession.
When games have been shown on the BBC, it's peak audience seems to be 3-4m. The most watched game here was the derby at 5.5m. I don't see where all of these new subscribers come from. Especially if established broadcasters can't attract them, can the PL really get the people to put into place the infastructure etc to do it?
What would seem more likely to me, is the broadcasters would put their time, effort, energy, expertise, creative and marketing budgets etc into building up other sports to fill the void. They would be able to substantially lower the entry point for Sky and divert much of the spending currently given to football to other sports. Look maybe none of them catch fire, but it's another risk.
Jordan's whole premise seems to be people are sick of paying 60 quid a month for Sky/BT packages. Which again is fine, but thats 9m people. How many are frustrated? 10%? If so you have 1m subscribers. I'm struggling to see how this translates into tens of millions of new subscribers.
On your final point, I think there is some bluff definately going on, which underpins this. Such a threat would probably damage everyone. The PL do not know how to market and build products in the way broadcasters do and it would be the nuclear option. I suspect the PL know a reduction in packages is coming, and football is very reliant upon massively increasing TV deals. The issue is, eventually broadcasters can't pay more, as TV consumers won't. I think the answer is to look at the desire of football to need ever expanding wages/transfer fees.
I think the thing to think about this is that it is a global deal, not a UK one, companies like netflix have 73 million subscriber worldwide, Amazon Prime video is 150 million, Disney Plus is 50 million and is a relatively new product.
Also you are not saying to people "pay £9 per month on top of what you are already paying", it would be instead of however they get their Premier league matches now.
The premier league is already a huge product worldwide, im not saying they wouldn't have to advertise and have setup costs for infrastructure. But I actually think they would get 100 million people signed up globally no problem. I could even see them partnering with 1 company that has that experience, like Disney, that have Disney Plus, ESPN and Hulu and creating "PremierLeague" as an on demand service.
I dont think it would be possible for Sky and BT to throw a load of money at another sport and get people interested in it. BT Sport have tried that to some degree with Premiership Rugby and it has not really worked. Football has a global mass appeal that other sports just dont have. I think the only downside for this would be for Sky, Virgin Media and BT. They charge around £35 per month for the full sports package (though often offer introductory rates) Its not really a question of how many are frustrated paying it, more about how many people have their current sports subscription, just to watch the premier league. If it was no longer on Sky sports and BT how many would keep those channels to watch Rugby, Darts, Cricket and German football?
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