SCRAP THE 3PM BLACKOUT – WHY ?
There have been calls in recent days for the scrapping of the 3pm Saturday TV blackout of live televised football across the UK.
Sky Sports are reportedly claiming they are losing out on revenue due to the existence of the Saturday 3pm TV blackout in England , with fans using fire sticks to watch games illegally.
1. How did we get to this point ?
The 3pm Blackout is an agreement created in the 1960’s by then Burnley Chairman Bob Lord to protect attendances at football matches at all levels across the UK.
Growing up in the 1970s almost all televised football was in highlight form with BBC’s Sportscene and STV’s Scotsport showing highlights of one Scottish game each weekend with some English games which were covered by their equivalent companies down South.
I can remember the days when I was young up to 1977 when the only live televised football matches shown in Scotland were the annual fixture between Scotland and England , as well as the European Cup Final. Audiences in England also had the FA Cup Final. I can remember newspaper reports in 1976 of football fans in Scotland travelling to pubs in the South West of Scotland where Border TV broadcast from England could be picked up and the FA Cup Final was shown live between Manchester Utd and Southampton.
The Scottish Cup Final was first shown live in Scotland when Celtic played Rangers in 1977.
The SFA with some reluctance allowed live TV coverage from Hampden Park of the two World Cup qualifiers between Scotland and Czechoslovakia in 1973 and 1977.
Going back to 1972 when Rangers beat Moscow Dynamo in Barcelona to lift the European Cup Winners Cup the SFA would not allow live TV coverage as it would impact on the attendance at the Scotland v Wales game at Hampden on the same night
There was a time in the early days of satellite TV coverage of live football in the UK where the Scottish Football Association banned games being broadcast live as there were games being played on these midweek evenings in Scotland.
English football began regular live league games on ITV with Tottenham v Nottingham Forest on 2nd October 1983 and the first regular live league games in Scotland was shown on BBC with Hearts v Aberdeen on 20th April 1986
Once the genie was out the bottle and satellite TV became mainstream , the explosion in live televised football has grown to where now , there is wall to wall coverage of live televised football with the exception of 3pm -5pm on a Saturday afternoon.
2. What are the benefits of 3pm blackout ?
It really depends on which prism you look through to see the different sides of the argument.
It can be argued that fans will attend games to watch their own team regardless of TV games , and this has some merit.
The issue I see is the less committed fan , the neutral fan who may no longer exist in great numbers, but they once did and TV has discouraged these football fans as they can watch many live games from their armchair every day of the week.
An example of the way neutral fans used to increase attendances is the Scottish Cup tie between Motherwell and St Mirren in 1977 , the attendance was 26,709.
The other issue is the future , the future of the game is under threat. If a fan stays at home and watches televised football rather than live football then they won’t take the next generation to live games , and each subsequent generation don’t go to games , the whole sport will see declining attendances.
Those at the top of the game with their American owners will never be impacted but it’s the football pyramid that will suffer as small club who rely on an ever decreasing fans through the gate will simply fold.
The current 3pm TV blackout covers the whole of the UK , so helps clubs in Scotland , England and N Ireland as well as the lower leagues and beyond in England to have regular 3pm kick off son a Saturday and their crowds are not impacted by TV live games.
If the 3pm TV blackout is retained at least these smaller club will still attract fans and will see the following generations continue to support the small local clubs.
3. What are the arguments against the 3pm TV blackout
Fans want to watch their team and with limited away allocations and the excessive costs involved with travel , food and beverages , as well as tickets , they can’t watch live 3pm games.
This is a fair point for those relatively few bigger clubs who have their matches televised and would predominately benefit the massive supports of a few teams.
TV companies , they would have total control of fixtures and would be able to charge whatever they like for each game or packages of games. This is no doubt the biggest driver of the push to abandon the 3pm Live TV blackout.
The large TV companies would see their profits soar while thousands of football clubs as every level of the game would struggle to survive.
4, Who pays ?
It does amuse me when I read stories of record TV deals for football particularly the Premier League in England.
It was reported in December 2023 that the Premier League had agreed a domestic TV rights deal of £6.7bn.
Great for the teams in that league receiving massive payouts each year, but ultimately the cost of this is borne by the fans through paying their TV subscriptions.
The game at the top in England has seen massive increases in TV revenues over the past 30 years , all paid for by fans and their TV subscriptions.
The result of this , players paid more , clubs borrowing more and pushing up ticket prices, paid for again by the fans . The modern game has also pushed into the commercial market with more and more football related products and yes paid for by the fans.
In the end football is using fans money to inflate a game to take more money out of fans pockets.
There has never been so much spending of other peoples money and the end of 3pm TV blackout will just increase the push to get more and more money out of fans.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that TV companies are pushing to end the 3pm Live TV blackout for their own benefits and the benefit of the ever growing number of American owners of English football clubs who see football fans as their own cash cow to be milked.
One day they will set up a scheme where you can pay your salary to them and they will control your complete spending, through their mortgages, their supermarket , their insurances, their pension schemes, their TV subscription, their travel system, and they might allow you a ticket to a match one day.
Football is Academical 