Originally Posted by Mark.:
“Even then, how valuable are the Saturday 3pm games (both picks)?
Conventional wisdom suggests that the best games will be moved into one of the TV slots With more TV games than ever, that means most weekends will be left with the 5th and 6th picks overall.”
There is still some value in Saturday 3pm games, though, because they're not on television at all, so you get a bit of a captive audience. You're still going to get big teams in there because of quotas, I know it'll be their worst matches but you do get some exclusive Man U or Liverpool games there. And you're also in the position to choose the most topical games so towards the end of the season you might get some very important ones when Sky and BT have picked a load of dead rubbers.
Originally Posted by Bosox:
“Will there be early Saturday Football League games on Saturdays next season? I'd just assumed that Sky would move them back to 5:15pm like they were when Sky had the 12:45pm PL rights before.”
That is almost certainly what they're going to do.
Originally Posted by swansea steve:
“good news for 5Live this new contract. while I know the diff says the Weds night games aren't that big a deal in numerical terms, I'd argue they are often good quality/important matches. for example this season just off the top of my head on a Weds its been Liverpool v Arsenal, Man City v Liverpool and the end of season game between Sunderland and Everton which relegated Newcastle (something which even a week later makes me smile). The Diff is right though that it makes the mid week situation clearer for supporters to understand which can only be a good thing.”
I wonder if they've decided just to scrap the individual Tuesday/Wednesday packages and just do one midweek package. It was always very much pot luck what you got on any given Tuesday or Wednesday anyway, sometimes there'd be loads of games on the Tuesday, sometimes the Wednesday. And as you say, the slots were never consistent enough so nobody could remember what station had what games.
Originally Posted by Mark.:
“So all of Five Live's weekend slots (3pm aside) are Sky picks. As are, you would expect, their late-season midweek slots, when Sky will undoubtedly show rearranged games.”
The other slight benefit for talkSPORT is that BT has fewer subscribers than Sky, so by broadcasting more or less all the BT games they can attract an audience who don't have BT but do have Sky.
