FSA Broadcast Working Group
One of our WHUST board members is part of this working group, along with representatives from Arsenal, Brentford, Newcastle and Spurs.
The aims of the working group:
To minimise the disruption caused by games moved for broadcast to match going fans
To voice supporter sentiment to decision makers at Sky, TNT Sports and the Premier League
To hold feet to the fire when anti-social selections are made, and deadlines are missed
To mitigate any disruption by subsidised travel options via National Rail or individual Clubs
Data - What the group measure:
Adherence to agreed publication dates for broadcast selections by the PL
Regularity of games being moved into antisocial slots with no public transport options
Recurrence of games being moved into antisocial slots for specific sets of fans, considering geography and other factors
Benchmarking trends Year on Year
Luton Town vs West Ham United*
An asterix match or a conditional pick is when a game is selected for broadcast, having its kick-off moved from the traditional 3pm slot into a televised one, yet remains at high risk of being moved again because of a potential fixture clash.
At least this time we know the result of the condition - should Luton be selected to play in the League Cup on the preceeding Wednesday then the match originally scheduled for Saturday 2nd September at 3:00pm will be rescheduled from the current scheduled time of Friday 1st September at 20:00 and will move to Sunday 3rd September at midday. That's 3 weeks notice before the match and we should receive confirmation this week when Sky chose their League Cup matches for broadcast.
Last season, with just five days notice, our match at Chelsea was moved from its new Sunday 2pm kick-off time back to a traditional 3pm Saturday kick-off as Chelsea were (predictably) drawn to play Champions League football the following Tuesday night. We joined in with the Chesea Supporters Trust in condeming this situation and with the FSA lobbied the Premier League to ensure that conditional picks had an agreed alternative date and time.
It is only going to get worse - there's potentially 4 PL clubs playing European football on a Thursday night ths season and probably 5 clubs playing Champions League from 2024.
It is a constant uphill struggle as clubs approve the Premier League’s TV deals as well as individual match moves. Clubs have been too interested in UK broadcasters’ money rather than match-going fans.
WHUST board member Mark Inskipp sits on the Football Supporters’ Association Broadcasting sub-committee and is involved in meetings with the broadcasters and the Premier League to put the supporters viewpoint across.
Fan groups are demanding changes to the next broadcasting rights tender document to stop these things happening.
Conditional selections seem like an obvious place to start – a game simply should not be allowed to move more than once for TV. If a game is at risk of being moved twice or more we don’t think it should be eligible for selection – simple as that.
WHUST believes it is the fans who pay for the broadcasting packages that fund the Premier League. The broadcasters and clubs should be working for us.