Premier League games outside Saturday 3pm window could be live on TV
The Premier League will on Thursday propose to its clubs an increase in the number of matches shown live on TV by between 50 and 70 games a season.The rise in t
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The Premier League will on Thursday propose to its clubs an increase in the number of matches shown live on TV by between 50 and 70 games a season.
The rise in televised matches from the present figure of 200 out of 380 would come into force from the start of the 2025-26 season and would mean most, if not all, of the games that do not take place at 3pm on Saturday would be broadcast live.
The 20 clubs will be given a presentation on the next auction of domestic rights, which is due to take place this year, and given recommendations and options for the packages. A vote is expected at another meeting next week.
The Premier League is also expected to propose an increase in the length of the next deal from three years to four years. It will need authorisation from the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, to do so, but can point out that the top leagues in Spain, Italy and France already sell their domestic broadcast rights in five-year packages and Germany is about to do so as well.
It will be the first such sale for nearly six years as the Premier League was given special dispensation by the government in 2021 to extend the deals it had with Sky Sports, BT Sport (now TNT Sports) and Amazon Prime because of the Covid pandemic.
Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, confirmed last month that it was looking at increasing the number of games available to broadcasters but ruled out scrapping the Saturday 3pm TV blackout because of the impact it could have on match-day crowds and those playing amateur football.
“We aren’t planning to change that,” he said at the time. “We are still supportive of it for those historic reasons to protect the 2.15 to 5.15 window to protect participation and attendance, and we think it still plays a role.
“I know people are frustrated they can’t watch every game, we have progressively put more matches into our live packages and are at 200 now and we are considering the volume of matches for the auction.”
Masters refused to rule out every match excluding Saturday 3pm kick-offs being televised, saying: “We’re thinking about it. There’s a process of deliberating over all of the issues that go into the preparation to launch the auction.”
The Premier League clubs are also set to be told that a financial settlement worth about £130-140 million extra a year to the EFL is close to being reached, though a vote is unlikely as there are still disagreements over new spending controls.
The settlement will mean the Premier League and EFL’s TV money is pooled, with the EFL given a percentage. The deal would run over a number of years and the percentage would vary per year but would mean more than £130 million extra a year for the 72 EFL clubs. The amount would also rise — or fall — depending on total TV income.
Masters confirmed to a parliamentary committee in March that was the proposed mechanism, saying: “Essentially, you put our media revenue and the EFL’s media revenue in a pot, take away costs and divide it on a preordained formula which means that going forward, our growth is the EFL’s growth, and vice versa, so our success is shared, it aligns the two organisations in a different way and ensures that gaps don’t build up in the future.”
As reported last week, the extra money would be distributed based on league position and adopting Uefa’s new cost-control model where clubs will be restricted to spending only a fixed percentage of their revenue on wages and transfers.
There is still disagreement on what that percentage is — sources say the Premier League clubs want it to be 85 per cent of revenue while the EFL favours 70 per cent, the same as Uefa’s level — and how the parachute payments will work under the new system.
