The death of Saturday afternoon football at West Ham
This week Premier League chairmen voted unanimously for a new package of a minimum of 190 Premier League games will be televised live in the UK from the start of the 2019-20 season with the rights set to go out to auction before Christmas.
A new package of Saturday night games will be offered to UK broadcasters, along with more midweek and Bank Holiday matches. There will be a minimum of 22 additional live games on offer. The new contracts will replace the record £5.136bn deal struck with Sky and BT Sport in 2015.
That three-season agreement represented a 70% increase on the previous £3bn deal, and involved 168 games being shown each season at an average cost to the broadcasters of £10.2m per match. Sky paid £4.176bn to show 126 matches, including the first Friday evening games and both Sunday packages, and BT paid £960m for 42 games.
The Football Supporters’ Federation says it is “firmly opposed” to any increase beyond 190 live games – half the Premier League’s total fixtures.
A statement read: “Any additional broadcast games would mean even more changes to kick-off times away from 3pm on Saturdays, with an impact of both uncertainty and inconvenience to the match-going fans, especially away fans, whose passion is a huge component of the ‘product’ that broadcasters want to buy and sell.
“Particularly in the event of a new Saturday evening TV slot being created, we urge clubs and broadcasters to give due consideration to issues of geography and travel, and to invest some of the huge broadcast revenues into supporting the attendance and contribution of match-going fans, especially away fans.”