Scotland may scrap Saturday 3pm football TV blackout
SPFL invites bids on more live games for 2029 rights cycle, sixty-year-old attendance rule can lapse without ever being repealed
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Celtic are the reigning champions in Scotland, and the league could be set for a major broadcasting shake-up (PA)
independent.co.uk
Scottish football's next television contract may end the Saturday 3pm broadcast blackout that has kept the traditional kick-off slot off live television since the 1960s. The Scottish Professional Football League has signalled openness to lifting the restriction from the rights cycle beginning with the 2029-30 season, according to the Press Association.
The blackout was introduced to protect live attendances: supporters, the reasoning ran, should be on the terrace rather than in front of the set. Its legal footing is Uefa's Article 48, which allows leagues to block live broadcasts as long as at least half of professional fixtures kick off at 3pm on a Saturday. That footing is also the exit. The SPFL has invited broadcasters to bid for more games than the current cycle contains — though not all of them — and once fewer than half of Scottish fixtures keep the traditional time, Article 48 no longer has to be implemented at all. The blackout would lapse without anyone voting to abolish it.
What is on sale is a transfer between revenue streams. Broadcast money goes to the clubs the cameras point at; gate receipts go to the clubs people turn up for. A league that puts Saturday afternoon up for sale is choosing the first stream over the second, and the protected hours being priced belong to the clubs farthest from the cameras.
England will be watching. The Premier League still observes the Saturday blackout but now shows every fixture across the rest of the weekend, from Friday and Monday nights to Sunday afternoons, with the 4.30pm Sunday slot tending to carry the biggest match. If Scotland moves first, the Press Association reports, the Premier League and the EFL could attempt the same.
The rule was built to keep supporters at the ground. The way to end it is not to repeal it but to schedule enough kick-offs elsewhere that it stops applying.