It’s Monday, December 4, in the hustle and bustle of the Premier League season, with Manchester City and Tottenham having played out a thrilling top-of-the-table clash a day prior. The wave of predictions emanating from the recently completed Euro 2024 group stage draw, and the stories of giant-killings in the weekend’s FA cup action. A familiar, borderline Groundhog Day-esque story came to top the sports headlines.
The Premier League had just agreed a new £6.7 billion domestic TV rights deal, bringing about the typical re-allocating of coverage rights between the UK’s two largest sports networks – Sky Sports and TNT – and a continuation in the gradual expansion of the amount of games allowed to be shown live.
In recent times, the explosion of one particular discussion topic has always greeted stories of new Premier League domestic TV rights deals; whether the so-called ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’ should continue.
Introduced in 1960 as a result of the tireless campaigning of then Burnley FC chairman Bob Lord, the ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’ is a piece of Football Association legislation that places a ban on the televising of any form of professional football game between the hours of 2.45pm and 5.25pm on a Saturday, when a large proportion of such games are played. Based on the logic that such a rule is needed in order to protect match attendances.
Across social media, the ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’ seems to be increasingly attacked by football fans with a raft of disdain and fury, particularly in the sphere of social media. For instance, popular football fan accounts on X such as Mark Goldbridge were quick to express anger at the continuation of the rule in the aftermath of the announcement of the new TV rights deal by the Premier League on 4th December.
The headquarters of Sky Sports, the UK’s largest football broadcaster, in Brentford, West London. Credit: Maxwell Hamilton @ Wikimedia Commons.
Arguments often made against the blackout include that customers of football broadcasters, whose subscription packages often cost in excess of £70 a month, are being short-changed as they are not able to watch every single one of their beloved teams’ games. And that it is ridiculous that the country in which the Saturday 3pm games are actually played is the only country where one cannot actually watch them.
Many even state that the entire rule is pointless, as it is clear – on account of the fact that in the last three decades the amount of games televised has risen exponentially alongside match attendances – that the televising of football has no effect on the amount of fans that want to actually attend games.
Despite all this, I would still hasten to defend the ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’, and believe it to in fact be a key element of England’s national sport.
Just to be clear, in my defence of the blackout, I will not go down the well-trodden path often taken by those who share my viewpoint of simply disregarding those who attack the rule as a bunch of ‘armchair supporters.’
As while it may on occasion be funny to mock those who don’t attend games – as a dedicated match-going fan myself – in reality there are a wide array of personal and financial circumstances that can prevent individuals from going to matches, and non-season ticket holders are still just as entitled to a view on the goings-on in English football.
Instead, I put forward the argument that the ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’ in fact has nothing to do with the Premier League itself, and that is what makes it so sacred.
I would argue that the point of the TV blackout is to protect attendances at lower league (particularly semi-professional ‘non-league’) games, the vast majority of which also kick-off at 3pm on a Saturday. As it is a key part of many football fans’ ritual of support to go down and watch their local non-league side whenever their Premier League side is playing away at the same time, in order to get their weekly fix of the beautiful game.
This is a pattern that in turn financially benefits often cash-strapped lower league sides, and that would simply not exist were the ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’ to be lifted, as fans would simply stay in and watch their Premier League side on television.
Take Tilbury FC, an eighth tier semi-professional side based in Tilbury, Essex, an area where a large proportion of local football fans support West Ham, and regularly attend the London Stadium. A clear spike in Tilbury’s attendances can be seen on weekends when West Ham are playing away at 3pm on a Saturday, compared to weekends when West Ham have a televised away game.
For instance, on the weekend of 4th March 2023 – when West Ham had a 3pm Saturday away game against Brighton & Hove Albion – Tilbury drew a crowd of 247, while on the weekend of 28th January 2023 – when West Ham had a televised away game against Derby County – Tilbury saw a smaller crowd of 170.
Supposing that of the extra 77 attendees, who turned out to watch the Dockers on 4th March 2023, they each paid £9 for a match ticket, spent £7 on food and drink, and bought a programme for £2 – all purchases a supporter would reasonably make at a game – their presence would help generate an extra £1,386. An amount of money that would make a great difference to a club like Tilbury, with the average weekly budget of a club at their level sitting at around the £10,000 mark.
A photo of Farley Way Stadium, a non-league ground in Leicestershire. Credit: Sirhissofloxley @ Wikimedia Commons.
There’s an enormous role that the ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’ plays in preventing clubs at the grassroots level, such as Tilbury, from falling into turmoil. And it cannot be disputed that English football would be many times worse off without ‘non-league’.
Many iconic English footballing talents – who went on to have great successes at the top level – cut their teeth in the academies of ‘non-league’ clubs. Such as Ian Wright, Stuart Pearce and Jamie Vardy to name a few.
Moreover, ‘non-league’ clubs form a huge part of England’s rich footballing culture, with the notion of cup upsets pulled off by lower-league sides forming a seminal part of English footballing discourse. And many ‘non-league’ clubs forming vital parts of local community structures, for example, FC United of Manchester provide food banks for Mancunians who have fallen on hard times.
The message is clear: resist an end to the ‘Saturday 3pm blackout’ and champion non-league football.
