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Sports Bar EPL @ 7.45pm on Saturday evenings?

DirtyDonki

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Premier League clubs are ‘considering playing matches’ at 7.45pm on Saturday evenings. Because games at 12.45pm, 3pm and 5.30pm aren’t quite enough.

According to The Times, Premier League chairmen discussed the prospect of Saturday evening fixtures in order to ‘cater’ for an increased in live televised games.

The current TV rights deal was agreed in early 2015 and runs until 2018, and ‘up to 30 more fixtures’ are expected to be included in the next deal.

Sky Sports and BT Sport are thought to be keen to ‘target a peak-time television audience’ with a Saturday evening kick-off, and with possibly more than 200 games being televised from the 2019/20 season, it has been pitched as a possibility.

Fans are likely to be delighted with the prospect of travelling miles to watch an away game at 7.45pm on a Saturday, while this would mean even fewer matches kick off at the traditional time of 3pm.

This news comes after revelations that Sky Sports had suffered a record drop in viewers this past season.

Sky TV have suffered their biggest drop in viewers for live Premier League games since records started in 2010.

The Premier League sold viewing rights to Sky Sports and BT Sport for a record £5.136bn in the latest three-year deal in February 2015, which works out at £10m per televised game.

Despite those numbers, Sky have recorded their sharpest fall in viewers in the seven years since the figures were recorded.

According to the Financial Times, the average number of viewers on Sky Sports’ live channels fell 14 per cent this past season, with total viewing hours suffering a fall of 6 per cent.

Figures from the Broadcasters Audience Research Board (Barb) show that Sky paid £4.2bn for the rights in the latest deal, while BT shelled out £960m. The latter have also seen a drop in viewers, but only of 2 per cent in average viewing.

Despite the seemingly poor numbers Sky are ‘encouraged’, and point to their own figures which show ‘the total number of people watching Premier League coverage last season was at its highest for three years’. Said figures are based on people watching their Premier League coverage across any platform for any longer than 15 minutes.

David Bond writes for the Financial Times:

‘The broadcaster pointed to a 31 per cent increase in viewing through Sky’s own streaming services Sky Go, which allows subscribers to watch on a smartphone or tablet, as well as Now TV, where football fans can buy day passes for £6.99 instead of signing up to a longer term pay-TV deal.’

Sky also attribute the less-than-flattering figures to the fact that the new rights deal meant that they were given 10 additional matches featuring less popular teams, while also pointing to the relegation and subsequent loss of Newcastle and Aston Villa from their coverage.

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DirtyDonki

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Day pass seems like a worthy option for those only interested in watching football. Assuming all 36 games were available via this media it would cost a mere £250 for the season which IMHO would be worth every penny. However the reality will be different as not all games would be screened, some being on Sat @3pm, European & Cup games etc. Even so still worth it for the quality of the stream IMHO.
 

danny187

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Day pass seems like a worthy option for those only interested in watching football. Assuming all 36 games were available via this media it would cost a mere £250 for the season which IMHO would be worth every penny. However the reality will be different as not all games would be screened, some being on Sat @3pm, European & Cup games etc. Even so still worth it for the quality of the stream IMHO.
Wont happen, there is a service next season for leagues below called iFollow, where you can pay £120 for your championship team/lower league games at 3pm, for overseas only and UK get Audio only lol.

They wont ever have 3pm games televised here, due to they think it will effect attendances at lower league clubs i.e why go and watch Braintree if can watch every West Ham game on TV etc.

Plus they like to be in control.

I watched every 3pm game for well over 3 years, even before then on a shitty 360p windowed screen on a lappy, my theory is they dont even offer that service so they should stay away from blocking it lmao
 

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