The Premier League, the top division of English club football, will remain steadfast in its refusal to broadcast games in the UK held at 3pm on Saturdays stating that its stance on the matter is a “solidarity issue.”
The Premier League has long supported the belief that a blackout window should be in place for games played at 3pm on Saturdays in an effort not to negatively impact on attendances in lower league football.
The Premier League is set to enter into the second season of its current set of three-year rights deals with pay-television broadcasters Sky and BT Sport when the 2017-18 campaign kicks off tomorrow (Friday).
Plans are now being drawn up for the next rights cycle from 2019-20 and chief executive Richard Scudamore said the league has no intention of altering its stance on Saturday 3pm kickoffs.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “The game is best served by not broadcasting on Saturday at 3pm for grassroots reasons. The amount of football that's played on Saturday afternoon is still a huge percentage. By far the vast majority of adult 11-a-side football is played on a Saturday afternoon.
“You then have all the Football League games. They can't all be displaced, and we believe if we were broadcasting all of ours we would be impacting upon that. So really it is a sort of solidarity issue for us in terms of the rest of football, and I think that the Saturday 3pm window will remain protected.”
Scudamore (pictured) also confirmed that the Premier League would implement a season-long streaming “superblock” as part of ongoing efforts to combat piracy of its audiovisual rights.
The Premier League last month obtained a High Court order that will require UK internet service providers (ISPs) to block servers that are hosting illegal streams of matches. The Premier League said the order, which will be in place for the 2017-18 season, forms part of its “biggest ever crackdown” on the illegal streaming of its content.
It is hoped the order will allow the league to combat the sale and use of illegal streaming devices such as pre-loaded IPTV and so-called ‘Kodi’ boxes. The Premier League obtained a similar order for the final two months of the 2016-17 season. The order resulted in the blocking of more than 5,000 server IP addresses that had been illegally streaming content.