Premier League reveals stance on scrapping Saturday 3pm blackout
The Premier League has ruled out supporting the abolition of the Saturday 3pm blackout which restricts when live football can be televised in the UK.
The English Football League (EFL) has floated scrapping the ban and broadcasters have said they would consider it but Premier League chief executive Richard Masters insisted they had no intention of backing the move.
“We’ve been proponents of Article 48 for the entire Premier League and I don’t see that changing in the near term,” he told the Financial Times Business of Football Summit.
The 3pm blackout is a rule adopted voluntarily by the English and Scottish Football Associations and designed to protect attendances lower down the football pyramid.
It prevents the UK broadcast of live matches between 2:45pm and 5:15pm on Saturday, and means that some games remain off limits for domestic viewers despite them being shown overseas.
It was suspended during the pandemic when supporters were banned from stadiums but reinstated once Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.
The 3pm blackout was reviewed in 2014, when fans’ groups wrote to regulator Ofcom to petition for it to be upheld.
Online broadcaster Eleven, then-owned by Leeds United chairman Andrea Radrizzani, challenged the rule in 2018 by showing Italian and Spanish football during the blackout period.
It backed down under pressure from partners, after English football authorities complained to European governing body Uefa, which technically imposes the ban.