Originally Posted by jazzydrury3:
“Am I right in remembering many moons back, probably before Premier League, you got a whole bundle of fixtures on the Friday Night, of that week, only a few on the Saturday, and then a chunk on the sunday”
Well, this is going off the point a bit now, because it's pre-Premier League, but it was sometimes the case. In 1989 there were no matches on Saturday 23rd apart from Liverpool vs Man U which had been rescheduled from an earlier round by request of ITV. That was the bizarre scenario we've mentioned before whereby ITV requested to show it live on the Friday, the Football League refused, and it was played at 12.30 on the Saturday and ITV showed the whole thing on an hour's delay and didn't have to pay for it because it counted as highlights.
Also way back in 1979 I think all but five matches were played on the Friday before Christmas instead of the Saturday, ostensibly because that was such a poor day for attendances because of Christmas shopping. One of the few matches that took place on the Saturday was Man U vs Forest and I've actually got the programme for that match, where they explain that the Football League gave everyone the option of playing on the Friday but Man U decided to stick with the Saturday because they felt it would inconvenience their fans, especially those who regularly travelled from Ireland and so on. Funnily enough ATV covered that match, because there were no Midlands teams at home on the Saturday.
Originally Posted by Neil_Harris:
“Why do BT have two games this weekend?”
Of course, this isn't the first time the secondary rights holder has had two matches a weekend, Setanta and ESPN had it quite frequently in the 2007-10 package when they had Saturday teatime and Monday night rights.