I live in Germany and since the El Clasico yesterday, there were multiple News around that the british people can not watch the game because of the blackout rule.
I never heard of it before, therefore i thought maybe its 1 weekend in the season. But as i clicked through some english articles about it, it seems the rule is every weekend.
Can anybody confirm if the rule is for every weekend? If yes, you basically never watch those 3pm games at saturday on tv? Its really weird for me that you cant watch them
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There are ways around the blackout rules but they are illegal and I obviously don’t know what they are (honestly)
Yep, every week, every season. IIRC since the blackout runs until 5:15, when they used to air Italian Serie A matches that kicked off at 5 they’d just miss the first 15 mins and start at 5:15 anyway. Must’ve been really annoying!
Ah but it gets more complex than that.
If a game is scheduled at 3pm on a Saturday and one team is involved in Thursday night European action, the game is postponed to 2pm Sunday. Makes sense, it would be a bit unfair to make a team play roughly 41 hours after they finished the previous game (which may have been a five hour flight away), especially if the other team has not played since the previous weekend.
But the game is still protected by the blackout. So even though it is now on a Sunday, you still can’t watch it live. It can happen to multiple games in a week, all of which are affected by this silly rule.
That’s changing in the next TV agreement from 2025 - they’ll all be able to be live on TV from then.
fun fact for those of you who dont know, we also have the blackout in Ireland, because so many of us wouldnt go to 5th tier english football otherwise you know /s