You've reminded me of an article I read recently (on the BBC I think) which was more focussed on the increasingly hostile / aggressive atmosphere inside football grounds since the pandemic (which I've noticed myself) but touched upon the decrease in younger fans attending matches as a result.

I reduced the amount I travelled to live football games when they stopped being entertaining - I could travel to 10 matches (at huge personal expense) and only 1 of them would be worth watching. It's the same problem now with televised matches and the "quota" of numbers of times that each team needs to be televised. Combine this with the increasingly ridiculous time wasting (which is beyond a joke), it's no surprise that people are deciding to do other things instead.

But you've covered most of this 🙂

Is it entirely implausible that it might look to change the number of players on the pitch, or shorten the length of games, or make any other number of changes that would benefit and/or encourage attacking play?

Or make the players play instead of people standing around for more than half the match.

As I read and before you got to the idea of a Franchise, the thought crossed my mind too. A couple of years ago, I got sucked in to The Hundred and am taking my son (who's approaching his 5th birthday) to play cricket for the first time on Sunday. Cricket feels more appealing to take him to than football despite me being a life-long football addict. I digress again. Imagine at the end of each season, players have the option of taking part in a 6-week franchise tournament and get paid a load of money to do it. Power to the players. It sounds strange but imagine a tournament where the (actual) best players in the world competed.

I've completely lost my trail of thought. If it weren't for FPL, I'd probably have already lost interest in football and the Premier League. Other sports are becoming increasingly more appealing to watch.

Edit: This is the article I was referring to