The English Football League has criticised the Premier League’s decision to broadcast live games on Friday nights from the 2016-17 season, with the slot having been traditionally reserved for lower-league football matches.
The Friday night games were revealed last month as the Premier League outlined the parameters of its next rights cycle by announcing that 168 matches per season would be offered on a live basis over three seasons, from 2016-17 to 2018-19, up from 154 games in the current cycle.
The rights will be split into five packages of 28 matches and two packages of 14 matches, with one of the packages including up to 10 live games on Friday nights. The Football League oversees the Championship, League One and League Two – the second, third and fourth tiers of the English game.
“The Premier League's tender document includes an increased number of live matches and an intention to broadcast up to 10 matches on a Friday evening, which is obviously disappointing as this slot has traditionally been used by the Football League for its own televised matches,” Football League chief executive Shaun Harvey said, according to the Press Association news agency.
“While it's frustrating and will make our job of meeting our own contractual commitments harder, we do nevertheless understand the pressures that are building on the fixture calendar.”
Harvey has blamed the demands of the Uefa Champions League and Europa League for adding to demands on the calendars of domestic club competitions. He added: “They (the pressures) are being created mainly by the expansion of European club competitions because leagues are prohibited from broadcasting their matches on the same night. In addition, it means that Premier League clubs in European competitions cannot play in televised domestic matches on a Monday evening.
“In any event, the broadcasting of Premier League matches on a Friday night at the level being proposed will always be more preferable than the idea of the entire Premier League fixture schedule being shown live, or matches being shown at 3pm on a Saturday, as this could have catastrophic consequences for our clubs.”