There's Too Much Football

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Tonight, TNT Sports in the UK will begin broadcasting three nights of Premier League football. It’s another week in which there is top-tier football, either domestic or European, on almost every night. Few people love watching football, either live or on TV, more than I do. But at a certain point, you have to wonder if it is all a bit much.

The packed February schedule rather underlines the issue. The Carabao Cup semi-finals began on February 5. There was been major men’s football; – League Cup, FA Cup, Premier League or Europen competition – on every night up to and including February 16. European competition resumed on Tuesday, February 18, with Aston Villa vs Liverpool also taking place on the Wednesday. Last night was the first day in that period without top-flight football on TV.

That doesn’t even include the Women’s Super League, the Championship (which is as bonkers as ever,) or the other top European leagues. However much any of us enjoy settling down to watch these games, this is an objectively insane situation for fans and players alike.

The football authorities have not helped, expanding competitions and trying to build up nonsense like the Club World Cup. Ultimately, though, the TV companies have made the schedule relentless.

Bin the Blackout

In some ways, this situation is a result of our silly blackout rules here in the UK, something I’ve moaned about for years. If TV companies were allowed to show games at 3pm on a Saturday, more games would be played then. Instead, we get games in increasingly arbitrary time slots. (And please don’t tell me that nobody would go to lower league football if there was no blackout. Fans determined enough to watch a Saturday afternoon game can find illegal ways to do it, so they are not going to another game in person anyway.)

Of course, nobody is forced to watch football, or anything else, on television. However, people obviously do want to watch football at least some of the time. That’s why the companies pay so much for the rights. So put it on when they actually want to watch it.

As I noted before FA Cup third-round weekend, streaming allows broadcasters to show more games at the same time. They are not doing so and this risks diminishing their product, whether through player injury due to lack of recovery time or fan overload.