The new Sky Sports+ deal

We are all creatures of habit, but about the only good thing about being stranded in the lower reaches of the league pyramid is that Charlton fans have mostly been able to hang onto the traditional Saturday at 3pm kick off.

3pm on Saturday is in every football fan’s DNA, especially if you are attending the game itself, but even if you aren’t.

The 3pm blackout has long been sacrosanct, as the media companies continually nibble away at the edges. Even for me on my armchair in Florida a 3pm kick off sits nicely in mid-morning at 10am allowing time earlier and the afternoon to do stuff. A 12.30pm kick off is 7.30am here, and that will be the middle of the night by the time you get to Addicks on the other coast.

Football is not a TV show but a live event with its outcome unknown. It is not just the 90 minutes, but it is the before and the after. To think in Charlton’s recent case, the before and after were the best bits!

3pm kick off’s allow those that want to travel across the country to see their team the ability to do so. It’s about the journey, family, friends, the memories.

Next season Sky Sports tell us that there will be four times as many matches shown live from the EFL with all 72 teams featured more than 20 times per season. Last year The Addicks were on once. The embarrassing Cray Valley game.

1,059 EFL fixtures will be televised live which includes 248 from League’s One and Two. That is every opening fixture in August with no 3pm blackout period and every final day of each division’s regular season plus the promotion play-offs.

And in between every midweek match across the EFL’s three divisions will be exclusively broadcast live on Sky Sports plus every game played during international breaks. On weekend’s Sky will show 10 live EFL matches, half of which will be from the Championship. The other 5 split between L1 and L2.

These will be screened outside of the 2.45pm to 5.15pm period on a Saturday that remains blocked from broadcasting to protect attendances.

Moreover every Carabao Cup game will be televised live and incredulously every fixture of the EFL Trophy will also be on offer. Blimey, no one goes to those games now!

Now, the ‘all 72 teams featured more than 20 times per season’ is the screaming headline but it is important to understand the detail. The Price of Football podcast unpacked a lot of that detail on their recent pod, which is well worth a listen because it might not be quite as bad as it sounds on first blush.

There will still be 26 games in the traditional 3pm slot played each Saturday across the EFL, and probably only ever 3 League One games shown live each weekend. Sky Sports are not planning to add or change their kick off slots from the Friday night game, Saturday and Sunday lunchtime.

Of the heralded 20 live games each they will include the first and last games of the season, midweek games plus international break fixtures Those were already outside of the blackout.

We’ll have to see of course how Sky Sports+, which is replacing the red button, goes, but it might not yet herald the end of football on a Saturday at 3pm, although it is severely under attack.

This deal is lucrative for clubs. The value put on it is £450,000, although no one from what I have seen has said that if that is per season or over the length of the five-season contract.

The press stories all say that this will simply replace iFollow and clubs’ independent streaming shows. Charlton have yet to announce what the future is for CATV, but I think we can guess and any savings will accrete to the Sky money.

CATV will I believe continue for overseas supporters, but in a skinnied down format. That does bring me to what are we going to lose though. Admittedly CATV was a Rolls Royce body for a Mini Metro engine, but it more than just showing the game.

One question not raised is who at Sky is goin to commentate and present these 1,059 games?

The quality and depth of the commentators, presenters and panels for bulk of current EFL live games is shocking and as live games have expanded across other platforms it has only got worse.

Only four cameras will be at L1 and L2 games, and it will be interesting to see what resources Sky throw at this, when other than advertising there is no uptick in subscription fees.

One positive is that we should at least be able to plan. Sky have committed to announcing all live games shown from August until the FA Cup 3rd Round shortly after the fixtures are produced. Then by November, Sky intends to confirm which games it will show between January and March. The rest of the season will follow a more “traditional” notice period, as the broadcaster watches to see how the promotion and relegation stories develop.

I hope Sky Sports+ doesn’t impact attendances, but it is bound too, especially for away travellers. Perhaps families will decide against a season ticket purchase in favour of picking their live games too.

Football has changed a lot, but outside of the Premier League for the majority of English football clubs the Saturday matchday experience hasn’t really changed at all, but that might be all about to change.