Reports today suggest that DAZN wants to ditch the “medieval” 3pm broadcast blackout for football and bid to air every single EFL game live.
The Times says that the streaming platform is seeking to acquire all 1656 EFL matches, which would effectively mean that football would be available to view at 3pm on Saturday’s for the first time since the 1960s.
It’s expected that DAZN would have to compete with current rights holder, Sky Sports, plus Viaplay and ITV, with BT Sports/TNT Sport also expected to join the bidding process. It’s understood the deal could be worth £200m a year to the EFL.
Sky’s current £119m contract covers 138 games.
Ben Wright, the EFL’s Chief Commercial Officer, has previously talked about ending the 3pm blackout, plus multi-broadcaster rights packages and looking at worldwide deals, such as those signed by Amazon and Apple.
On the 3pm issue, he said: “on an average weekend at the moment in the UK, which is our biggest market, we’re making 5% of that product available live in 2022. Is that a contemporary approach?”
DAZN sources quoted in The Times have called the rule “medieval” and “anachronistic”, pushing fans towards pirate streams.
The 3pm rule dates back to the 1960s, and states that no Premier League or English Football League game can be broadcast live on television between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on Saturday afternoons. This was because clubs felt that it would have a negative impact on gate receipts. It falls under Article 48 of the UEFA regulations, which allows leagues to designate a “closed window” for broadcasting.
DAZN which recently became Europe’s biggest digital sports broadcaster currently streams 1.2bn hours of content across 130m connected devices.
Its media centre in Leeds is where all feeds for its global sports events go through before being streamed to international markets.
Any new deal would be for the 2024/25 season onwards.
