[Post edited 23 Feb 2023 21:44]

Next EFL TV deal - some good news, some alarming news by Northernr 23 Feb 2023 20:04
There's a story in the Mail* tomorrow about the EFL's next TV deal which goes on the block shortly.

*As it's the Mail, they'll have picked out the most extreme scenarios and extrapolated them out into the most outlandish possibilities under their editorial policy of every story should make the reader afraid, angry, or preferably both, but still...

The good news is that new players in the market such as Viaplay and DAZN, as well as BT becoming part of the wealthy Warner Bros Discovery group, means there is competition for the EFL rights this time, which will drive up the price, as opposed to last time where Shaun Harvey took it upon himself to just hand the whole thing over to Sky for five years. They reckon the fee will go past £200m this time, doubling our TV revenues.

However, some of the things we're going to trade for that...

All the fixtures across the three divisions have been divided into 20 packages. In short, every single EFL game will be available to buy.

They will attempt to override ban on televising 3pm Saturday games, however the Premier League is likely to object to this. The EFL can force an override because the ban only applies when 50%+ of the Football League games are taking place at 3pm on a Saturday, so if the EFL moves 60% of its fixtures to, say, Sunday, the ban would then not apply anyway. Every weekend would basically look like the FA Cup Third Round, with the whole programme cut up in groups of half a dozen fixtures into a dozen kick off times across Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon.

They could well sell these 20 packages across multiple broadcasters, so you may need a Sky, BT, Viaplay, DAZN subscription to watch QPR games.

In short, you think we get a lot of fixtures pissed about with now, just wait...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-11785985/EFL-television-rights-set-double-value-200m-year-race-live-coverage-heats-up.html