YayaJonas wrote:
Had a few issues with sky when I moved home so they offered a lot of freebie as an apology so never really paid for ESPN. but didn't realise it was only £2 more.
Does anyone know how many away games they have? Or is it a wait an see job like with sky?
They get to negotiate every quarter (a total of three blocks basically) ... like now they both (Sky and BT) have announced the games up to November end. Next they'll announce from Dec to Feb, and then final March to May slots. While BT had 38 games including first choice for a certain no (can't remember off the top of my head, but I think around 18 of those) so they'll have 1st choice for those and for the rest Sky takes their picks first. In total I think Sky has 116 games on live this season, which'll be two games on Sundays under their Super Sundays, one MNF where we kick off on Monday Night Football and then they have Saturday evening slot as well. BT will mostly have the first game of the weekend, which is Saturday early kickoff (around 12:30 or 45 I think, which is before the Sat 3pm slot for which we all go looking for streams or foreign channel subscriptions) ...
One thing Sky has cleverly negotiated (given their experience doing this I guess) is that they get to chose first which gameweeks they want first choice on, so even when BT has first pick, that's kind of from the gameweek Sky doesn't want in the first place so expect all major derbies to be on Sky all season, but BT should get some decent games in there through the season. Take first week for example, I am sure Sky chose this as their first pick and probably picked out Scum's first game v Swansea and put it on a Sat (being start day of the season) then they chose Chelsea and Man City games being first games for the other two new managers, and instead of slotting both on Sunday put ours on MNF, and also given we are playing Newcastle so would attract a lot of viewership on weekday as well, then also picked up Tottenham v Crystal Palace I think it is as their final game of the weekend and put that one on Sunday with Chelsea's game against Hull so get to show two new comers against two big boys ... and then BT got to pick a game and show as the first game of the season and fucklers decided on Liverpool v Stoke ... either a Hughes fan siting in their boardroom or some oldie from Liverpool glory days want to show his team is probably why they have picked that. Poor Arsenal, nobody wants to touch em ... Spurs game against a promoted side ahead of Arse playing Villa gotta hurt Gooners as they look for sat 3pm streams.
We've got a good chunk of games in this first quarter picked by both Sky and BT and when we are sitting at the top leading by the time they decide next lots, I expect to get quite a bit of us being picked up by both broadcasters this season.
On another note, looking at relatively easy first 5-6 fixtures as compared to Chelsea or scum, we should really start the season full throttle and take hold of the league right from the get go.