It has been almost a week since the Premier League Fixtures were announced along with the TV games for the opening day, hre we bring you the dates for your calendar of when each tranche of TV fixtures will be announced.
The rest of the fixtures for August and September will be announced by the Premier League on July 6th, just over a month before the season starts which is the minimum period of notice that must be given when changing a date for a game to be played to accommodate a live TV broadcast, although we all know that the TV companies operate on a basis of that as they are paying so much money rules are there to be broken.
In practice the actual notice period can vary between 4-6 weeks, although as the season drags on the TV companies will try to leave it as late as possible in their choices to ensure they can broadcast games that matter.
Of course there will be games that need to be changed at short notice for valid reasons ie European qualifications etc, but in the main they should be rare occasions.
Certainly there seems to be no reason why the TV companies could not have agreed who is broadcasting what and when for August by now.
The big question for those football fans who follow their teams by actually going to games is when they can know for sure if a fixture is a TV game or not so we have printed below the Premier League's official release dates for TV fixture for the coming season.
As mentioned
Period of matches Approx date of announcement
Aug/Sept 6 July
Oct/Nov 7 August
Dec/Jan 12 October
Feb 12 December
Mar 25 January
Apr 22 February
May 5 April
MW38 post-MW37