New EFL/Sky deal

Here’s a theoretical League 2 calendar for 2024/25 season and how many live games might be on Sky for each round…

Sat 3 Aug - 12
Sat 10 Aug - 1+
Sat 17 Aug - 1+
Tue 20 Aug - 12
Sat 24 Aug - 1+
Sat 31 Aug - 1+
Sat 7 Sep - 12 (International)
Sat 14 Sep - 1+
Tue 17 Sep - 12
Sat 21 Sep - 1+
Sat 28 Sep - 1+
Sat 5 Oct - 1+
Sat 12 Oct - 12 (International)
Sat 19 Oct - 1+
Tue 22 Oct - 12
Sat 26 Oct - 1+
Sat 2 Nov - 1+
Sat 16 Nov - 12 (International)
Sat 23 Nov - 1+
Sat 7 Dec - 1+
Sat 14 Dec - 1+
Sat 21 Dec - 1+
Thu 26 Dec - 12
Sun 29 Dec - 12
Wed 1 Jan - 12
Sat 4 Jan - 3+ (FAC 3)
Sat 11 Jan - 1+
Sat 18 Jan - 1+
Sat 25 Jan - 3+ (FAC 4)
Sat 1 Feb - 1+
Sat 8 Feb - 1+
Tue 11 Feb - 12
Sat 15 Feb - 1+
Sat 22 Feb - 1+
Sat 1 Mar - 1+
Sat 8 Mar - 1+
Sat 15 Mar - 2+ (FAC QF)
Tue 18 Mar - 12
Sat 22 Mar - 1+
Sat 29 Mar - 12 (International)
Sat 5 Apr - 1+
Sat 12 Apr - 2+ (FAC SF)
Fri 18 Apr - 12
Mon 21 Apr - 12
Sat 26 Apr - 1+
Sat 3 May - 12
Play-offs - 5

This adds up to at least 233 games (including the 5 play-off matches).

So only 15 or 20 (if you count the play-off games in the 24 off the quoted minimum live games from League 2. And most of them could come from Saturday 3PM games that are postponed and rearranged for midweek slots.

EFL fans need to get used to 12:30 kick-offs. We’re all going to be getting 3 or 4 of them a season. And even more if you’re in the Championship.

And then you don’t know how the games will be spread on international weekends. You would expect Sky will want games Saturday & Sunday at 12:30 & 15:00 with the international matches generally having a kick-off time of either 17:00 or 19:45.

You can’t help but wonder whether it would make more sense to just scrap the 14:45-17:15 blackout to avoid all the 12:30 kick-offs and just show all 552 matches in all 3 divisions.

Quoted from Spurn boy

I have a feeling that Wrexham (USA) of League 2 will become the Man Utd of the premier league as far as TV coverage is concerned, am I jealous no not in the slightest. We are Town UTM

Saturday 12:30 kick-off times will be no use to them. That’s 4:30AM in LA.

I think the clubs wanted/voted for this deal for a few reasons - £125k extra a year is probably more than ifollow brings in currently, plus it's guaranteed you don't have to hope x amount of fans will buy a pass to watch certain games. You can make plans with guaranteed income.

The bigger picture is the amount of games on tv - my brother is one of these digital media guru's and he tried to explain it to me in an idiot-friendly manner as : 'most companies see value for their money in the amount of seconds their logo appears in the media, and the more seconds you can guarantee to the largest audience possible allows you to charge a higher price for the advertising space'  so basically when teams renew their shirt sponsors from now on they should get more money for the deal as a knock-on consequence

Quoted from OddShapedBalls

I think the clubs wanted/voted for this deal for a few reasons - £125k extra a year is probably more than ifollow brings in currently, plus it's guaranteed you don't have to hope x amount of fans will buy a pass to watch certain games. You can make plans with guaranteed income.

The bigger picture is the amount of games on tv - my brother is one of these digital media guru's and he tried to explain it to me in an idiot-friendly manner as : 'most companies see value for their money in the amount of seconds their logo appears in the media, and the more seconds you can guarantee to the largest audience possible allows you to charge a higher price for the advertising space'  so basically when teams renew their shirt sponsors from now on they should get more money for the deal as a knock-on consequence

Very cr@p guesstimate :

£125000 / 23 games = £5434

£5434 / £20 (approx price of ticket ) = 272

So judging by that , the ‘x’ amount of fans buying a pass or not going to the game is just under 300. Then of course you have to factor in the commercial side and how much each person would potentially be spending at the ground.

For me though, nothing beats spending an afternoon with your mates. Supping a couple of pints and berating the dodgy linesman for 90 minutes.

Quoted from WOZOFGRIMSBY

Very cr@p guesstimate :

£125000 / 23 games = £5434

£5434 / £20 (approx price of ticket ) = 272

So judging by that , the ‘x’ amount of fans buying a pass or not going to the game is just under 300. Then of course you have to factor in the commercial side and how much each person would potentially be spending at the ground.

For me though, nothing beats spending an afternoon with your mates. Supping a couple of pints and berating the dodgy linesman for 90 minutes.

I don't really follow your argument, we're talking about what ifollow currently brings in not matchday attendance??? - a standalone matchday pass being £10 at most with no opportunity to sell scotch eggs to the people buying one so your numbers should be 543.4 people buying full cost matchday passes every game - not every game is available to purchase etc so actually for Ifollow to compete you then need even more online purchases, As ifollow /marines tv whatever you want to call it is also a hosted service I assume we pay for it and don't see all of that £10 per ticket anyway, and then of course there will be a transaction fee on the payments made so even less of the £10 reaches the club........  Largely, when you use mariners tv it's because you can't get to the game not because you'd rather watch an awful 1 camera angle showpiece. If you want an extra 272 fans lets get the osmond opened up but that's a separate issue.  You're also discounting the value of increased advertising and the fact that the £125k is guaranteed not speculative and affected by how well the team are doing....