New Sky TV and EFL deal

As expected Sky TV and the EFL have shaken hands on a record domestic rights deal to show over 1,000 live games per season, thus closing down Sky Sports’ EFL red button coverage and the EFL’s domestic streaming option whether that was via iFollow or like in Charlton’s case their own streaming service.

Whether the 5-year deal spells the end of Charlton TV as it is now I guess we’ll find out in the summer. The show certainly elevates levels of branding and communication beyond what most other clubs in the EFL provide, but the 46 shows starring Minto, Curbs, Brownie and others is surely one of the more costly items on the club’s P&L other than wages.

Live streaming will still be available to international supporters, but I suspect there’s a good chance that the club revert to purely showing the pictures with match commentary for international supporters and forego the current CharltonTV show format.

Each League weekend fixture round will see 10 live EFL fixtures shown, five from the Championship and five between League’s One and Two.

The Saturday afternoon blackout will continue and Sky have promised that they will provide longer notices of live games to help with travelling and home fans.

Of course only weekday matches are currently allowed to be viewed within the UK, but the leakage to VPN users and other means boosts actual viewing figures.

Although Sky have committed to more of an equal spread of games chosen, so not just Leeds and Wrexham, I don’t see any hard and fast rules around that.

Interestingly all EFL Trophy and Carabao Cup games will also be shown live, which will further damage attendances to games that are already sparsely attended.

The long EFL statement is here, and suggests that League One clubs will be 25% better off under this arrangement.

As an international supporter I at least will still have access to live games, but I’d be very surprised if Charlton TV’s accompanying post and pre-show will continue.

There will also be less Saturday 3pm games and I also question whether the pictures and viewing experience will be as good or better than we have now. Naturally we can always go and watch and we are all hopeful that more people do get to The Valley next season to witness a much more exciting product than we’ve sadly become accustomed to.