English football on television
[4] On 19 October 1946, the first live televised football match since the war was broadcast by the BBC from Underhill Stadium in Barnet.
The BBC, meanwhile, started showing brief five-minute highlights of matches on its Saturday night Sports Special programme from 10 September 1955 until its cancellation in 1963.
A major blow to the TV moguls was the absence of big box-office draw Stanley Matthews through injury, and the game ended 1–0 to Bolton in front of a sparse crowd.
[8] However, ITV withdrew from the deal after first Arsenal and then Tottenham Hotspur refused them permission to broadcast at their matches against Newcastle United and Aston Villa respectively, and the Football League demanded a dramatic increase in player appearance payments.
While ITV continued to show occasional live matches from other competitions,[9] two of the regional companies began transmitting weekly highlights from the Football League in the 1962-63 season.
The first match was Liverpool's 3–2 victory over Arsenal at Anfield on 22 August, and the estimated audience of 20,000 was considerably less than the number of paying customers at the ground.
The programme transferred to BBC1 in the wake of England's 1966 World Cup win and at last could be received by television viewers across the UK.
In 1954, Kenneth Wolstenholme provided commentary on the few televised matches for BBC from Switzerland – including the quarter-final between Hungary and Brazil.
[17] The 1962 World Cup in Chile was covered in delayed form by the BBC with film having to be carried by air via the United States back to Britain.
London Weekend Television's The Big Match started in 1968, and eventually the entire ITV network's football coverage would be broadcast under its title.
The demand for live televised football grew in the wake of England’s World Cup success, though the authorities remained reluctant.
Television coverage was threatened in 1983 by a bid from Telejector, to screen live League football exclusively in pubs, bars and clubs.
However, the authorities decided to maintain their relationship with BBC and ITV and a deal was struck for the start of the 1983–84 campaign that allowed both companies to screen five live League matches per season.
The first live league match on free-to-air television since 1960 was screened on ITV, between Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest, on 2 October 1983.
Combined with BBC’s FA Cup coverage from the Third Round onwards, live top class football became a regular fixture in the Sunday afternoon schedules.
They eventually opted to agree a deal with Sky Sports rather than ITV or the BBC, meaning leading live top-flight football was no longer available on terrestrial television.
Some public houses install foreign satellite television decoders hardware to enable customers to watch live Premier League games in their establishment.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that EU law on the free movement of goods should be applied to the decoder cards.
In 2007 Karen Murphy, a Portsmouth publican, was convicted under s297(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), in that on two occasions she: ‘… dishonestly received a programme included in a broadcasting service provided from a place in the United Kingdom with intent to avoid payment of any charge applicable to the reception of the programme.'
Beginning with the 2017–18 season, all matches not shown on the linear TV channels will be available on Premier League Pass, a subscription service hosted by NBC Sports Gold.
However, from 2019 to 2020 season, DAZN announced that it had acquired Canadian rights to the Premier League, replacing Sportsnet and TSN, under a three-year deal.
[45] Figures from UK tourism body VisitBritain suggest that 750,000 visitors to Britain attended a Premier League match in 2010, spending a total £595 million and an average of £766.
Other matches may also be moved to Sunday, usually because one of the teams involved played in a UEFA Europa League fixture the preceding Thursday.
Two matches per midweek round will also be picked for live broadcast by TNT Sports on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at either 7:30 p.m. or 8:15 pm.
Each broadcaster is subjected to restrictions on the number of times they can show each team live per season to ensure fair distribution of TV revenue.
In February 2011, Advocate General Kokott of the European Court of Justice opined that the "closed periods" did not encourage match attendance at other league games.
No closed periods were adopted in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, or in Northern Ireland, that is to say, within the sphere of influence of English football.
More recently, the legality of such fines has been disputed, and a number of Crown Court cases have been reported in which publicans successfully challenged the Premier League's position.
[50] On 20 June 2020, Brighton & Hove Albion and Arsenal played the first Saturday 3pm Premier League game to be shown live on television in the UK, as part of "Project Restart" during the pandemic.
[54][55] On Saturday 6 May 2023, Sky Sports were permitted to circumvent the blackout for their broadcast of Manchester City vs Leeds United live at 15:00.
