Originally Posted by Col87:
“No matter what Sky say I think it certain that they will go all out to keep the Sunday Afternoon and Monday night live premier league games.”
Monday night matches probably aren't the top priority - they didn't have them between 2007 and 2010, and they show a load of weak games in that slot (last night's being a good example) because you can very rarely show the big teams in them because they're in Europe or the Cups.
Sky will want the best games, whenever they're played. They want quality, not quantity. I don't understand the idea that having games played at 2pm on Sunday would be a "big build up" to the 4pm game. They're already showing live games at 1.30 most weeks.
Originally Posted by jrmich9:
“Very interesting. I'm guessing not having protected hours in countries like Spain, Germany, Italy etc hasn't actually impeded attendances to the extent they need to implement them.
Admittedly though, I'm unaware as to whether they'd potentially only be airing non-domestic live football in those time slots.”
It isn't really worthwhile comparing what happens here to the rest of Europe because the rest of Europe doesn't have a football pyramid like we do with so many teams involved, which is why we have the blackout. In most European countries lower league football is a total irrelevance.
I don't see Sky or BT or any broadcaster rushing to remove it. The number of people not subscribing to Sky because they're not showing every game is minute.