Having a pint or two with your mates before the match, buying a programme from the same seller every game or burning the inside of your mouth on a pie – lots of football fans have their traditions they have grown up with.
And most of those will have been born from going to games at 3pm on a Saturday. But the ‘traditional’ weekend kick off time is slowly being eroded away and is quickly becoming the exception rather than the norm.
Of course there are several factors for teams not playing at 3pm on a Saturday, television being the big one with rights holders Sky, TNT and Amazon unable to broadcast games kicking off between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday – and so therefore having to pick other time slots across the weekend to satisfy the demand of their customers.
Then there is Europe, teams playing in the Europa League and Europa Conference League usually play on Thursday nights and so therefore the earliest they can play at the weekend is Sunday to allow enough rest between games, and then there are reasons beyond football such as local marathons or events or a state funeral or Coronation that mean that games need to be moved.
But little by little over the past few years the 3pm kick off slot – especially in the Premier League – has been used less and less.
In the Premier League era, the 1998-99 season saw 66 percent of games kick off at 3pm on a Saturday, in 2004 it was still above 50 per cent and even six years ago it was above 40 per cent, but this season it has dropped to 35 percent of games kicking off at the classic time.
And that is about to go down yet again from next season. From the 2024-25 season onwards, all matches played outside the traditional Saturday 3pm slot will be shown live, and that means that a minimum of 267 of the 380 games will be broadcast – with that number set to increase further when the new broadcast deal kicks in – and therefore not take place at 3pm. That leaves just 113 games (29.7 percent) for the 3pm Saturday slot.
And it is not just the Premier League – the EFL have a new broadcasting deal with Sky Sports starting from next season and that is set to see more than 1000 games broadcast.
Just this week Sky Sports announced that they have a brand new home for EFL games called Sky Sports+ which will have the capability to show up to 100 live events at once. Interestingly they will put that to the test on the opening weekend when they have pledged to broadcast every single one of the 36 EFL games on the opening weekend of the season (August 10).
It will navigate English football’s long-standing 3pm blackout rule, which isn’t in play until the weekend after when the Premier League season starts.
But in a typical weekend Sky will show 10 live matches, with five from the Championship, and five from Leagues One and Two combined – and these games will of course be subject to the 3pm blackout.
In fairness to Sky Sports they have pledged not to introduce any new time slots for EFL games with Friday night, Saturday lunchtime and Sunday afternoons being used and no plans to show games on Sunday evenings.
And in further credit to Sky Sports they have said that to help minimise disruption to match-going fans, they will pull forward the dates by which it makes its game selections, promising that every live fixture preceding the FA Cup third round would be selected before the season begins, and games up to March decided by November.
So in a world next season where 70 percent (267 of the 380 games) of Premier League games will be broadcast on TV and ‘more than’ 64 percent (1,059 of 1,656 games) of games in the EFL are broadcast, and the technology is there to show up to 100 live events at once, the question has to be asked why we are doing this dance around the Saturday 3pm games?
The reality is that there are two types of football fans, match-going fans and armchair fans and it is perfectly possible for both to co-exist and be happy with how they support their team in their preferred way. A YouGov poll in 2023 found that five million adults across the United Kingdom had watched sport via illegal streaming. So those that want to find a way to watch their team on television at 3pm on Saturday will find one.
So why not scrap the 3pm blackout all together while embracing the technology and have the best of both worlds?
The 3pm blackout was brought in to protect attendances down the football pyramid, but by broadcasting two thirds of games in the Premier League and ELF then surely that theory will be put to the test – so scrap the blackout, broadcast games and 3pm, keep the traditionalist happy and see what the negative impact will be. My bet is attendances will not be negatively affected – in fact with more games kicking off at 3pm you may well see a rise gates, especially in the EFL.
Read more from James Andrew:
Match-going fans are priceless to football – so don’t price them out of the game
VAR promised certainty but has only delivered noise and confusion
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