Exactly. It’s genuinely a travesty that we had so many games on a Sunday that weren’t even shown on TV. The worst of both worlds.
3pm kick offs 2025/26
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Nik (@Rood), Jamie (@Vault Dweller) and Ed (@That'sHernandez) give their end of season awards out! They celebrate the best players, goals and moments of the season (there were some, honestly) and also give out awards for the worst and most disappointing players/moments of the season.
They then discuss all the latest transfer rumours and get into the potential ins and outs this summer at Old Trafford.
But it doesn't encourage people to go watch their local team. Just because you know a few people who it might possibly have affected doesn't make it true to the masses. Like I said, answer me this: if Manchester United being on telly is such a distraction for local clubs, what about other major TV events, hadn't we ought to stop them? God forbid someone missed out on Scunthorpe United winning the League 53 cup in lieu of watching Ryan Giggs getting shagged on Love Island
Your arguments are getting more and more ridiculous; nobody is not going to a football match to watch fecking Love Island as you well know, you may as well be comparing apples with rap music. The attendances of my local side when Wolves and Villa are playing is genuinely between 100-200 less to when they're not, that's a significant difference; and would clearly increase if the kids at their games wearing Wolves/Villa/United/Liverpool etc shirts sat at home watching those sides on TV instead. There's generally a further increase of another 100 or so for midweek games with European games on television; it quite clearly does encourage people to watch their local side otherwise there would be no impact on attendances. And it's not "a few people" I know that watch both. It's the vast majority of people I go to football games with at both the top level and the seventh tier that would be affected, multiply that outwards and it is obviously a huge % of people that take an interest in both ends of the pyramid - and it isn't the immediately impact I've said would be the problem as you repeatedly conveniently ignore; it is the impact over two, five, ten years that would slowly kill off much of the support in our non-league system which is generally celebrated in this country. You clearly don't give a rats arse about that, which is up to you, but the reality is it affects such a small % of United games that it really isn't impacting you. People like you, of which there are plenty, will find a way to watch United at 3pm if for whatever reason you're not at the game, so why do you care? The 3pm black-out helps continue traditions of children spending their Saturday's learning that football isn't a TV show, if it's removed then more and more people - particularly children - will grow up watching TV rather than taking in the live game 10 minutes down the road which will dramatically impact the footballing culture over the coming decades and would only hurt the pyramid.
I can't believe it's taken them so long to do this.
I understand the Saturday 3pm rule. But what was ever the justification for not showing PL games that were happening on a Sunday?
Exactly! There’s no reason whatsoever to not televise games on a Sunday.
Wouldn’t mind if the league went back to the Covid schedule or what La Liga do, 1 game Friday & Monday, then 4 games Saturday & Sunday at staggered times
There is still no need for a specific time slot blackout. Why not have lower league football kick off at 2pm and have all the PL games televised at 4pm? You could go and make it home or the pub to watch the PL.
Also, it’s 2025. At the end of the day people should have the choice of whether to go to local football or watch on TV. Arbitrary restrictions based on flawed reasoning at the time shouldn’t leave us stuck with no alternative other than to break the law.
The ridiculous reason is that those are ‘rescheduled’ 3pm games.
games only get moved to Sundays for those playing Thursday nights (Europa League)
I've been saying for decades: no staunch supporter of, say, Norwich or Wycombe will not go to a home game so that they can watch Everton vs Burnley on telly. It's a ridiculous rule and always has been
There's a much easier system than what they currently have. As another poster mentioned, lower tier games could be scheduled at a different date/time to solve the problem. Making it illegal for the whole country to watch football matches at a specific time is the definition of pandering to the minority of people you describe. Pandering in the complete wrong way. It's not just difficult to watch the match on TV, they actually made it illegal. Do you truly believe that is fair and there aren't better ways to do it? There are lots of people like me who support Manchester United only (or fans of other clubs on TV), and locking us out to cater to a minority is not fair at all.
Reasonings clearly weren’t & aren’t flawed, they’re still as relevant today as they were when they were introduced. People can selfishly bury their heads in the sand all they like but that’s the reality of it.
Nearly all Manchester United matches are scheduled at a different time to Saturday 3pm. Quite literally every game bar one kicked off at a time that wasn’t Saturday 3pm last season. And it’s not illegal to watch football matches at 3pm on a Saturday - it’s actively encouraged that you go to watch football at that time because, as stated countless times, football is not a television show. On the very rare occasions United do play at 3pm on a Saturday it’s nearly always at home game against a lower end side and as such tickets are available everywhere for buttons across the various social media ticket pages, even available on this forum usually, so just go to the game.
Just abolish 3pm Saturday kick offs for the premier league.
It is funny you have taken a position as a marginalised fan and calling me selfish then in the same breath tell us to "simply get to the game". It is not just Manchester United affected by this stupid rule, it's all clubs. Not everyone can afford to buy tickets, not everone can afford or has the ability to travel up the country to get to the ground. In this day and age, why should they have to? What is so bad about options?
Your attitude is incredibly selfish though and I've not pretended to be marginalised in any way, whether United are on TV or not doesn't impact me in the slightest; I've just given real world examples of the potential impact of lifting the ban from both ends of the spectrum. 59 of the 60 Manchester United games last season were not on a Saturday at 3pm. Paying for the TV channels required to watch said football game would be considerably more expensive than going to that one game; particularly a non-televised United game where there are always tickets for way less than FV, so lets not go down the affordability route.
There's nothing bad about options, and there are plenty of them, for that one Saturday 3pm kick off, you had the option to go to the game, you had the option to stream the game, the option to go to one of many pubs that show the Saturday 3pm kick offs, the option to go to another game or the option to do something else.
There are plenty of options around a 3pm black out too. In the past clubs were allowed to state a preference in terms of which midweek day they would play their home matches, be it Tuesday or Wednesday - in non-league clubs still get that choice and some pick Monday to avoid that televised European games - United traditionally played their midweek games on Wednesday's as an example. Obviously now with all the midweek games being televised the clubs don't get that choice, but with the TV companies now being able to broadcast every game outside of the 3pm Saturday kicks offs, there's no reason clubs couldn't be given a choice at the start of the season of whether they were content to play home matches outside of the Saturday 3pm slot to allow all of their home games to be televised or if their preferred slot was still that Saturday 3pm. It would be interesting to see what the clubs would select if given that choice to be fair.
It's a weird one isn't isn't it?
It's not like Sky couldn't have picked the matches involving teams playing on a Thursday to be shown on a Sunday. It's just that they didn't bother a lot of the time because they thought they had a better fixture to choose from that was then moved for TV instead.
I don't think there was anything stopping the PL from selling rights packages to games moved for Europa League or Conference league in the past. They just chose not to, probably assuming that there wouldn't be the appetite from viewers or broadcasters to show mulitple games that clash on a Sunday afternoon. It's like they were catering to football fans who would be happy to watch any game rather than fans only interested in watching their favourite team and thought that was good enough.
Edit: This new deal runs until 28/29 by the looks of it. Wouldn't be surprised if every game is televised in the next selling of rights after this and there are no 3pm kick offs at all after then.
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I loved when it was scheduled like that, it felt like there was always some football on to watch.
It's more fun spread across different days rather than condensed into two, although it would make things more difficult for the traveling fans so probably not an actual workable idea.
I'd actually prefer if more of our games were at 3pm on a Saturday though. With the broadening of the schedule, I now have to constantly disrupt family plans because Utd could be playing anytime from Friday evening to Monday night (for domestic games). I'd much rather have more football at 3pm on Saturday or any regular time so that I can do other things at other times.
It's the same reason I'm not a huge fan of the late Friday or Saturday kick offs which take up a weekend evening. Turning down seeing friends because of football at 7.30pm on a Saturday isn't a great thing to have to do.
So would I, but with the control TV companies have over the scheduling I'm not really sure what your point is? Match-going fans have been an afterthought for the league and TV companies for years, it's not changing anytime soon. Opening up the 3pm slot for TV wouldn't actually mean you'd have any more certainty over the scheduling of the games, you'd still see a Friday/Monday slot, three or four slots on a Saturday and two or three on a Sunday; they would still schedule the games for prime times to suit their TV audiences and move games at relatively short notice - even the FA Cup final moved away from 3pm on a Saturday over recent years because it's not the prime TV time slot.
My point is that a lot of games are currently moved for TV. If they could broadcast at 3pm simultaneously, they wouldn't need to be moved to be broadcast.
Ideally, something like
- 12.30pm Saturday
- 3pm x 6
- 5.30pm
- 2pm & 4pm on Sunday
Maybe a MNF every now and then if you must.
Most of the 3pm kick offs would get the same audience numbers regardless of competition (in fact they'd probably go up as people stop using pirated streams). The fact is the smaller PL teams don't draw huge TV audiences when they play each other as it is.
US Sports manages to do fine with NBA and NHL games on air at the same time. Amazon have their days when multiple games are on air at the same time. The trade off for getting rid of the 3pm blackout could just be that games have to be simulcast.
That's just not how it would go. Obviously I'm not in favour of lifting it anyway because it would do serious damage of the support at lower levels over a long period of time, but TV companies just wouldn't do that, they would continue with the current spread of games as well as televising the 2/3/4 Saturday 3pm games. If they had full autonomy, they would want their channels being watched as often as possible, not all at once and then nothing for another week. The reason it works with US sports is because from what I know about them, a lot of them are streamed via apps which is obviously a very different way of consuming the content - which brings me right around again to the fact that football is not "content", it's a spectator sport and anything that encourages people (and particularly children) to watch live football rather than their TV is a great thing.
And frankly as a trade off that would make it worse rather than better. If the blackout were lifted today, there would be 2/3/4 games shown on an average Saturday at 3pm; your suggestion would mean 6 games effectively doubling the number of people who may could potentially choose to stay home rather than taking in another game.
Brutal twist of fate that sky gets way more games the season we will inevitably have more sat 3pm games.
'Alleged' leaked PL fixture list I've just seen has got us away at Spurs first game of the season. Sunday 16:30 kick off.
Gross.
Nice 3 pts to kick us of. Mbuemo with the winner for us
we will have 1 game at most. There are only about 100 non televised games next season.
Not sure where else to post this, so mods or admins move if needed.
Great fixtures that for us to get a head start and for Ruben to calm supporters nerves...
Great fixtures that for us to get a head start and for Ruben to calm supporters nerves...
Not sure where else to post this, so mods or admins move if needed.
Great fixtures that for us to get a head start and for Ruben to calm supporters nerves...
Hey look at the bright side. There were about 12 teams that did the double over us last season and it wasn't any of those 3.
Leeds coming up not helping - their fans will tell you how they often got bigger viewing figures in the Championship than lots of PL matches. Both United v Leeds games surely good television picks as is Leeds vs lots of teams. Leeds/Everton already moved for the first weekend.
With circa 270 of the 380 games being on TV/not at 3pm on a Saturday it pretty much means everyone is averaging 27 games on the box to start with, then the more popular teams and teams in Europe boosting beyond that while some of the less fashionable teams will have fewer.
With circa 270 of the 380 games being on TV/not at 3pm on a Saturday it pretty much means everyone is averaging 27 games on the box to start with, then the more popular teams and teams in Europe boosting beyond that while some of the less fashionable teams will have fewer.
We're obviously bigger than them, but Newcastle had 11 last season while not in Europe. Even with the additional televised matches I think we might have more than 1.
It won't be 11, but I think it could be 3 or 4.
Not sure where else to post this, so mods or admins move if needed.
Great fixtures that for us to get a head start and for Ruben to calm supporters nerves...
Jesus Christ. That’s a horrible start.
My guess is they will give us the UK television ones tea time sat early sat ..
It always seemed to me that in the Rooney and Ronaldo era we used to always play Saturday at 3 and we would smash whomever we played. The Glory days.
I remember the Setanta days at 5.15 we racked up a few big wins
4-1 and 4-0 v Aston Villa
6-0 and 5-1 v Newcastle
4-0 v West Brom
5-2 v Spurs
Ah yes Setanta. Being Canadian, it was my lifeline for footy. Between Setanta and our local channels I was able to watch every United game for 15 dollars a month. CL and cups too.
That Spurs game was ace. It was a glorious day weather wise. Loads of us met up in town and walked to the ground. Amazing days.
I quite liked Sky's extra channel which was PPV - you could pick and choose the games you wanted and it was a lot cheaper than TNT's monthly fee these days which showed United so few times that I've dumped them ahead of next season