Originally Posted by wolvesdavid:
“but I don't see what is wrong with having kickoff times moved to suit TV.”
But you do know that this an away game for Birmingham?

There's also an opponent in this match, namely Maribor. The club and the Slovenian broadcaster have of course made arrangements for the match to kick off at 19:00 CET. Now you could argue that England is a much bigger TV market than Slovenia but let's face it: This is only the 5th pick match for British broadcasters but the only Slovenian club that's left in European competitions.
Apart from that, I've always been against centralised marketing for UEFA Cup a.k.a. Europa League. There's just too many disadvantages to it. In most countries, at least one of the two time slots is unpopular. In the UK and Portugal, 6pm is too early. In eastern Europe, 22:05 local time is too late, especially in winter. And in Germany, for example, neither 19:00 nor 21:05 CET is ideal because fans and TV viewers are used to kick-off times at around 20:30.
And what's more, there's just not enough pan-European interest in the competition as a whole to justify centralised marketing. It would only work out if TV stations in many countries wanted to show a large number of matches - even if there aren't any clubs from their own nation left in the competition. But this doesn't seem to be the case. The main channels in larger markets tend to avoid the Europa League, and UEFA have significant problems to sell the rights.
In Germany, there will be only one game per matchday on FTA television from 2012, and this 1st pick package hasn't even been sold yet. RTL, the market leader, simply won't bother. SAT.1 (the current broadcaster) has lost the CL rights, so the EL won't make sense for them as a standalone product (they've already pushed off this year's group matches to their smaller sister channel Kabel 1). ZDF will have the CL next year, so they don't need the tatty Europa League. This leaves only ARD and Sport 1 as potential buyers for the rights. Sport 1 is short of cash, so they can't pay much. ARD, being a public broadcaster, could splash out but the EL matches don't fit into their schedule which is centered around the news at 20:00 and primetime programming at 20:15 CET. And it has to be said that Germany (along with Britain) has been one of the few countries where UEFA earned a decent amount of money for the 2009-12 period.
Financially, the new competition format is likely to become a total failure.