It’s rare that lower league football should find itself in direct competition with a television match at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, but that’s exactly what happened when England kicked off against Wales in the Millennium Stadium last weekend.
To make the best of a bad job for lower league and non-league teams, kick-off times were moved and, where no agreement between the two clubs could be made about moving the day or time, gates across non-league were lower than would reasonably be expected.
I’ve already had my say on why I believed the football authorities were wrong to allow a 3pm kick-off for an international match on Saturday, but this does raise a wider debate about the usual 3pm blackout across English football that forbids any broadcaster to show a live game at 3pm.
There’s a good chance this could change in the future, due to the Karen Murphy case. The pub landlady from Portsmouth’s case against the Premier League and Sky regarding broadcasting rights hasn’t reached its conclusion yet but there’s a good chance it could significantly alter the way football is currently broadcast in this country.
Karen Murphy’s complaint was that she should be allowed to show Premier League games in her pub at 3pm with legally purchased equipment that allowed her to receive foreign feeds of games, legally being shown abroad.
The European Court of Justice’s Advocate General, Juliane Kokott has indicated in favour of Ms Murphy. Although this view isn’t legally binding it would be a surprise if the courts ignored the Advocate General’s opinion.
This will lead to a problem. If the domestic and European rights get merged then the rest of Europe, where any match can be shown at any time, would either have to agree to a 3pm ban, which is highly unlikely, or English football will need to drop their ban.
In all honesty, chairman at clubs lower down the pyramid should be already planning for this day, albeit without any great relish.
But even if the 3pm blackout is to end, the events of this weekend gone show why it is necessary.
To the average Premier League fan, this 3pm blackout probably does seem unnecessary. Twofootedtackle’s own Mat Rodger has argued this very point before now. And, yes, for fans of the Premier League and, to a certain extent, the Championship, the ban seems somewhat pointless.
There are already feeds, both legal and illegal, that fans up and down the country already use to watch their team in action when the game isn’t televised. There are cameras at every ground. The modern Premier League fan is catered for in a multitude of ways.
It’s unlikely those who dedicate their weekends to watching the stream of their favourite club would have much impact on gates at the top level. If they really wanted to attend the game, they would go to it. And if their circumstances dictate they can’t do otherwise, there’s no question that they’ll be watching the game on their laptop at home.
But these are the hardcore and, in many respects, somewhat irrelevant to any argument on this. They will watch their team whenever, wherever. But there are a large number of supporters in this country who you’d classify as “casual” fans, and these are the ones who would be most tempted to stay at home in front of a Premier League game instead of heading to their local team.
Watching non-league, I regularly invite friends who support Premier League clubs to the terraces of Tooting, or wherever I happen to be going that week. With no 3pm game, they often accept, and hugely enjoy their non-league experience. Many return with me to other games and some have even been known to head to a local game off their own back.
But they are also the type of casual fan who would be more likely to stay in if there was a half-decent game on the TV at 3pm. Certainly, it’s impossible to get them to a midweek game when the Champions League is on TV.
These are the fans who can make a difference to a struggling non-league team. Even an extra 50 through the gate for a game can make a huge difference for a club lower down the pyramid, even some of the League One and League Two clubs who are struggling financially. Add in any extra bar takings, food and the like and you can see what a difference a bigger gate means for these teams.
It’s these teams - the small Conference teams, the regionalised leagues, that benefit the most from the 3pm kick-off. If a decent League One team finds its Tuesday night gates down due to Arsenal versus Barcelona in the Champions League, what chance does your average Ryman League club have?
The outcry in the world of non-league to the England 3pm kick-off alone shows the depth of feeling from chairmen and fans alike towards having to compete with a bigger draw.
As David Malone, a director at Eastleigh FC, wrote in the Non-League Paper, they estimated that their 3pm kick-off against Woking on Saturday cost them an extra 400 fans through the gates and around £3,000 of lost revenue because of the England game. Imagine those numbers being replicated week in week out if the 3pm blackout was abolished. It could send many smaller teams to the wall.
With respect to the Premier League and their fans, they are not the only football in the country at a weekend. Grassroots is still a vital part of our beloved game, yet is also the most vulnerable due to the size and tight budgets.
The 3pm blackout may be a minor (if that) inconvenience for clubs higher up the pyramid, and it may be a barrier for the Manchester Uniteds of this world to earn more money. But for non-league teams, it’s part of their lifeblood. Those clubs challenging in the Champions League may not notice much if they earned, say, £50,000 less but many non-league sides have been wound up for less.
One of the joys of English football is the diversity of the game from top to bottom and, at the lower levels, the friendliness and joy between the clubs and fans. It is unique and a wonderful yin to the Premier League’s yang.
Scrapping the 3pm kick-off may mean very little to the bigger sides but for the sake of the smaller teams, the grassroots, and the love of the national game, there’s no doubt in my mind that this blackout should stay.
Tags: 3pm blackout, Eastleigh, England, International football, Karen Murphy, Premier League, Sky Sports
Incidentally, Terry Duffelen has written the case as to why the 3pm blackout should end, over at the Football Fairground. There are some good points and I don’t necessarily disagree with a lot of them.
http://www.footballfairground.com/hoopla/2011/03/time-to-move-on-from-saturday-afternoon.html
Interesting article, Gary, and also Terry’s arguing the contrary. I’ve started to believe this for a while now and reading this just convinces me even more: the non-league season needs to be moved to March-November, just as is starting to happen with youth football.
Avoiding competing with the Premier League and Champions League (for some of the season at least) would be an obvious benefit but I hold this view for a more important reason: the weather.
I support Chelsea but the teams I actually go and watch are Kirkbymoorside and Pickering Town, who play in Tiers 11 and 9 of the ‘ladder’ respectively. During the winter, Pickering played on 23rd November and then, due to the snow, not again until 3rd January. Kirkbymoorside now have about nine home matches to get through in four weeks for the same reason; their pitch was unplayable for about seven weeks.
The chaos of a fixture backlog, as well as some quite difficult cash-flow problems, surely suggest a move away from playing in November, December and January would be a good idea. Casual fans are more likely to come if the weather is nice, particularly in uncovered grounds.
I’m not sure how common this view is: would you prefer Tooting to play during the summer, when non-league could enjoy a monopoly and attract more paying spectators?
I usually agree with you on most things, but in this case I really don’t think it would have much of an impact. The live televised games on a Saturday are so jammed up against the 3pm kick-offs (one ending just before, another starting just after) that most people going to non-league matches will miss most of them anyway.
Obviously you can watch in the club bar or whatever, but most people have lives - I can devote five hours to getting to the ground, having a pint, watching the game and coming home, but it’s rare that a 12.45 or 5.15 fixture is so compelling that I want to add another couple of hours on top of that and write off essentially an entire Saturday for football viewing. And if you watch all of the 12.45 game, you’re not getting a great place on the terrace for the game you’re actually at in any case.
So the issues already exist - we already have Saturday afternoon live matches on the telly, and I don’t think the slight, almost perfunctory, staggering of them as we have now really affects any fundamentals.
Mike, that’s a very good point and one I started thinking about when I published this. It’s certainly an option, although there would be some serious logistical hurdles to overcome, not least where do you make the cut-off point for summer football, and how do you reconcile summer football with the rest of the pyramid? It’s certainly an idea.
Charles, weirdly I’m not totally against all that Terry wrote (and, without putting words into his mouth, I don’t think he’s against all that I wrote). And, somehow, I think the blackout will end sooner rather than later.
Sky does tend to schedule the bigger games for Sundays or Mondays, but a 3pm viewing will, I think, still deter some casual fans from heading to non-league and I don’t think many chairman at lower levels would be keen on it. I guess we wouldn’t know the exact impact until it happens.
I’d rather keep the 3pm blackout, all told, but I think non-league should prepare for it going and, who knows, it may even come up with a better solution.
PS For clarity’s sake, I’m not actually a Tooting supporter. I just watch them occasionally and generally hope they do well. Chris is the die-hard on here, but, for a variety of reasons, I tend to watch them more than any other non-league team.