IAN HERBERT: Ending the 3pm TV blackout is a runaway train hurtling down the tracks

To have introduced one of your sons to football through the prism of Bury vs Wrexham 0 Gigg Lane, 15th January 2000, is to know that League Two on a Saturday afternoon will not be an easy sell in a world where screens and video clips and instant gratification are all the rage.

There wasn’t much satisfaction in the 2-0 win that day, but there were sights, sounds and a kind of communion.

The geyser feeding the Bovril cups. The choirs at the far end. The delirium after the goals. And, if memory serves, our boy chanting the name of Peter Ward, a midfielder he had never heard of before the game.

You won’t get that in a TikTok clip. ‘GameDay’, they call Saturdays on talkSPORT. That pretty much sums up the most beautiful day of the week.

But Wrexham soon spent a decade on the verge of extinction, Bury went bankrupt, and though 3:00 p.m. they are standing at a crossroads now.

About 75 percent of them are technically insolvent, backed by investors, because no cash is coming in to cover player salaries.

The arrival of London-based streaming service DAZN, which is offering £200m a year, almost double the current TV offer, to broadcast all the games and end the Saturday 3pm blackout will certainly have an impact. attraction.

It will be a moment of strong symbolism if that delimited period between 2:45 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. on Saturday is eliminated.

The latest concession to the television stampede that football has been trying to keep at bay since Liverpool tried, and failed, to sell live coverage of their games to the BBC and ITV in the 1970s. featured was all they were allowed to post).

It will be up to the owners of the 72 EFL clubs to decide whether the league recommends DAZN’s bid, but it will be a different constituency than when Burnley’s Bob Lord instigated the blackout more than 50 years ago, believing it would prevent televised football from damaging attendance. in other parties.

There are now many more foreign owners around the table, including the Americans who run Ipswich, Gillingham, Portsmouth and Wycombe, among others. They’ll see past the puff of cigarette smoke as they approach the stadium.

They will see the appeal of the EFL in the US, where quality club football is lacking and the excitement of a football pyramid is completely lacking.

The choice is whether to take that step and trap whatever crowds are there, or remain behind the protective veil of a blackout that makes EFL clubs unknown to most beyond our shores.

“The 3pm blackout is a lovely sentiment and has emotional appeal, but we have to look beyond the attendances and look at the rest of the world,” says an EFL club owner.

DAZN would seem less dazzling if the paltry amount of cash sent from the Premier League were more equitable and less manipulated in favor of a few.

Around half of the £460m disbursed to the EFL comprises parachute payments from the Premier League.

That allows six or seven relegated Premier League clubs to exist comfortably between the Championship and the Premier League, while clubs in the extremely competitive League One rake in £720,000 between them. There is only £480,000 for League Two.

“The only way for the rest of us to be viable is by finding and selling an academy player or finding new media platforms,” ​​says the EFL owner. ‘It is a fact of life that the world is now media driven. This is a big leap into the abyss, but it will have to be taken.’

Other reasons why the 3pm blackout is something to treasure go to the very heart of football in British society. Protects attendance figures for matches and participation levels in grassroots football.

That’s an important consideration, says Brian Barwick, former director of football for the FA, BBC and ITV. “It doesn’t mean we should get stuck in the mud, but it has provided protection for many decades.” Barwick also notes the role television deals have played in the development of the game.

In truth, it’s hard to see evidence that televised soccer hurts attendance along the highways and byways of the professional game. The more football on TV, the more attendance there seems to be. EFL games were broadcast at 3pm during the World Cup, but attendances increased.

Among those ready to wipe out the blackout are Bristol Rovers CEO Tom Gorringe and Bolton’s Neil Hart, and the game is, in part, already gone, and even the FA Cup final is a moveable feast.

The FA is now considering lifting the blackout for the FA Cup on the television cycle after 2025 so they can sell more games and make more money. It seems that this train is rushing down the tracks, as much as we want to hold it back and hold on to one of the cadences of our sporting life.

In an exhibition titled Going to the Match, currently on display at the Bolton Museum, a photograph capturing fans waiting to enter the Paddock Wing Stand, in the old Burnden Park, makes you stop and stare.

The tail is a length that would cause complaints today, but no one seems to be very upset. The supporters are there, in serious conversation, bundled up against the cold, undistracted, of course, by any phone. It will almost certainly be a little before 3 pm on a Saturday.

That type of communion is increasingly scarce, a means to maintain it seems to be vanishing and more is a pity. But the world goes on.