There are four Premier League games kicking off at 3pm today all of which will be available to watch overseas. None, of course, will be screened live here. This will continue to be the case up until 2030 at least under the terms of the league’s £6.7bn broadcast deal extension announced this week which maintains the sanctity of the Saturday 3pm blackout.
Nowhere else in Europe’s major leagues is this a thing. It is a peculiarly English – and Scottish – phenomenon.
While 25 per cent more matches will be shown live domestically – predominantly by Sky – under the new TV arrangements the no-go zone driven through by the Burnley chairman Bob Lord almost 60 years ago will be maintained.
The English game and the broadcast landscape may be unrecognisable from that era – club chairs don’t tend to be the local butcher anymore – but Bob Chop’s law still applies. It was relaxed during Covid, when no-one was allowed into grounds, but as soon as crowds returned so did the blackout.
It is as much a part of the English football landscape as the pie and the programme. It is so ingrained that not even the all-powerful Premier League dares challenge the blackout. What then of Karen Carney’s bold plan to banish it?
One of the most eye-catching tenets of the former England international’s review to raise standards in club football is the recommendation to hijack the Saturday 3pm slot and use it as the shop window for the women’s game.
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Carney envisages a live Women’s Super League match in that slot every weekend instead of the current 11.30am Saturday or 6.45pm Sunday windows – neither of which are particularly conducive to attracting armchair – or match-going – fans.
It is an excellent idea, a forward-thinking approach which would offer a chance to boost broadcast and sponsorship revenue as well as putting the product in front of more eyeballs. However Carney’s scheme requires an exemption from Article 48 of UEFA’s statutes which would need the blessing of the Premier League and the EFL.
Neither of those two organisations knowingly does much that is not directly in their own interests. There will be elements within those bodies thinking: ‘well if we can’t do it, why should the women be allowed to?’
Where do we start with that? The gentleman of the FA’s ban on women’s football being played at professional grounds which lasted until 1970, perhaps? The long years of struggle for women’s football to be taken seriously rather than ridiculed since? The second-class citizenship which even now is part of the football fabric?
The boys owe the girls this opportunity. The argument for keeping the blackout in place has always been as a protection mechanism for clubs lower down the pyramid. If there is a top-level match on TV, fewer fans will make the effort to go and support their local grass-roots club.
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Would screening women’s football regularly have the same effect? The (male) cynics will argue that no-one wants to watch women’s football whenever it is on. And it is true that Sky’s WSL viewing figures are down 20.5 per cent this season.
But with the right space and platform there is an audience for it. Last month’s WSL match between Chelsea and Liverpool, which was screened on the BBC, pulled in a peak of 955,000 viewers which is more than Football Focus.
The key point here though is that while there is some overlap it is a largely new audience that is being attracted to the women’s game. More family-orientated, more female. There is no threat to the health of the grassroots men’s game from Carney lifting the blackout blind.
Women’s football in this country is an uneven patchwork but it has a capacity to grow which the men’s game has already exhausted. Monday’s WSL Arsenal v Chelsea game at the Emirates is heading for a sellout. As of yesterday 57,000 tickets had been sold. That is an example of where it can go.
The Premier League and EFL need to look at the big picture, give the women’s game a helping hand and go with this.
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