Watch Bolton 9.00pm Saturdays next season

No more after midnight viewing if you want to see our goals. No more bollocks from Clarage either!



The Football League is set to transform the viewing experience for fans of its clubs following the signing of two ground breaking broadcasting agreements with Channel 5 and ITN Productions and the expansion of a fibre-optic network linking its 72 clubs.

For the first time ever, highlights of Sky Bet Football League matches will be shown in a prime-time Saturday night slot from the beginning of next season, after the League signed a new three-year agreement for its free-to-air highlights with Channel 5.

Match footage, including every single goal, from matches in all three divisions of the Sky Bet Football League will be broadcast in a new 90 minute show aired at 9.00pm every week. Channel 5 will also broadcast highlights of the Capital One Cup and Johnstone's Paint Trophy.

The Football League's Chief Executive, Shaun Harvey, said: “This is an exceptional opportunity for The Football League to work with a broadcaster that will schedule our matches in a prime-time slot. It will take our games to a wider, younger audience by giving us the chance to be first in front of fans on a Saturday night.”

David Lynn, President of Channel 5’s parent company, Viacom International Media Networks UK said: “We are extremely happy to be welcoming back top quality football to such a prominent slot on Channel 5. The Football League is one of the toughest and most attractive club competitions in world football and we’re convinced this highlights package will prove highly popular with a mainstream audience at the heart of our Saturday evening schedule.”

Channel 5 is in the process of tendering the contract to produce its highlights show and will announce its preferred programme production partner in due course.

Match footage will be filmed, edited and delivered by the League’s new production partner ITN Productions. As part of a multi-million pound three-year contract, ITN Productions will cover the Sky Bet Championship, Sky Bet League 1, Sky Bet League 2, Capital One Cup and Johnstone’s Paint Trophy matches - a total of 1,813 games per season across Football League and Premier League grounds.

ITN Productions will also produce digital clips and highlights content of The Football League's competitions for use by domestic broadcasters (Sky Sports & Channel 5), international broadcasters (through Pitch International) and clubs (through their online Player service), as well as clips of Premier League matches for top flight clubs that are part of the League’s FLi network of club websites.

Mark Browning, MD of ITN Productions, said: “This is a transformative moment for ITN Productions and ITN. We are already a key player in UK sports production and now every goal in the Sky Bet Football League, Capital One Cup and Johnstone’s Paint Trophy will be produced by ITN Productions. This is the result of our continued investment in production excellence and fast-turnaround publishing capability along with a world class team.”

The opportunity to broadcast Football League highlights at 9.00pm on a Saturday night has been made possible by the installation of ADI’s high speed Live Venue fibre-optic network that delivers real-time HD match footage to ADI’s Sports Hub operations centre in Preston. All Championship clubs are currently connected to the network with League 1 and League 2 clubs going live by the summer.

The Football League’s Chief Executive, Shaun Harvey said: “The expansion of the fibre-optic network across our clubs represents a significant multi-million pound investment by The Football League into our future broadcasting content strategy. It will deliver new opportunities for supporters to view matches across a range of platforms.”

Geraint Williams, CEO of ADI said “Connecting every stadium to the Live Venue fibre network has been a massive undertaking, but one that will deliver huge value for the viewing audience. One of ADI’s key strengths as a fully independent technical service provider is that we offer a completely rights-agnostic network platform and we are proud to be playing such a pivotal role in transforming the way in which Football League match content is televised. As we continue to develop the services available via Live Venue, we’re incredibly excited about the value we can deliver to all parties involved.”

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First spike tv and now this. Channel 5 are really making a play. Beats when they first started by having Keith chegwin do a krypton factor assault course in the buff

y2johnny wrote:First spike tv and now this. Channel 5 are really making a play. Beats when they first started by having Keith chegwin do a krypton factor assault course in the buff

Naked Jungle!

I remember flicking over to channel 5 and thinking what the hell is this when the whole participants were stark bollock naked.

I thought Spike was a spin-off of Viva as they are broadcasting the shite that they did?

I'm glad that the Football League show will be aired well before midnight!

Sad day, I like the Football League Show. I'll miss Leroy Rosenior, easily the best pundit on TV.

Disaster! Saturday night is for recording stuff to watch at leisure and the missus records Casualty or similar at 9 so there's a danger of a clash with MOTD or other stuff if they show at that time. It was never a problem when it was on at silly o'clock. Does anyone stay in on a Saturday night to watch MOTD and FL show? If so, don't pander to them.

i think its great its on earlier, the BBC always treated this as second class anyway. Any idea who will be presenting?

Channel 5 do a good job with the cricket highlights and other football so its all good i reckon

Norpig wrote:i think its great its on earlier, the BBC always treated this as second class anyway. Any idea who will be presenting?

Channel 5 do a good job with the cricket highlights and other football so its all good i reckon

Channel 5's cricket highlights were CRAP! And the on-line service was a ruddy joke! I got so hacked off with it I joined a Facebook group calling for them to be stripped of the rights and I still despise the way they run it. 

I think this is a disaster. Channel 5 will bollocks it all up just like they did the cricket. There was nothing wrong with the Beeb's show. It was well informed, well presented and used good pundits. Leroy was one, Claridge another and the presenter was excellent, better than Lineker and the 'smug brigade' on MOTD. 

This is a bad day for football fans imo.

we'll have to agree to disagree about the cricket highlights LPP , I personally think they have done a great job with it since they got the rights. It seemed to just move channel but kept all the same people involved so didn't notice too much difference to be honest

Norpig wrote:we'll have to agree to disagree about the cricket highlights LPP , I personally think they have done a great job with it since they got the rights. It seemed to just move channel but kept all the same people involved so didn't notice too much difference to be honest

It wasn't Sunset and Vine or their people that hacked me off mate. It was the way Ch 5 would have Mark Nicholas bigging them up and talking about their 'on demand' highlights being available an hour after the show and the constant, constant interruptions of cricket for some dumb competition that meant we actually saw less than seventeen minutes of cricket in a forty five, sometimes forty six minute program. 

The OD service was always way later than they said it would be, then they'd lard it with ten mins of ads before the program started. It would promptly freeze, require a refresh and off would run another ten mins of unskippable ads. I ran it with Adblock on Chrome for a short while but then 5's software whizzes made that impossible. If you tried to start the show you got a message "To view this content you must disable adblock" and when I did hey presto, ten mins of ads then a FROZEN SCREEN! 

As you may have guessed I'm not exactly keen on Ch5 broadcasting any sports shows. 

The Beeb, for all its faults should have the rights to highlights for both cricket and football imo. They may not be all that glamorous but they do a good job of it and their various 'catch up' services all work when and how the Beeb say they will. Even Channel 4 would do me with Sunset + Vine going back there for the cricket and Maneesh and the team from FLS going there for the footie. Anyone, just anyone other than those incompetent clowns on 5. During the last home Ashes series day one of the first test would not work for me or twenty odd other people who lived near me until Day FIVE of the match itself. 

I just think that 5 do stuff half-arsed and on the cheap and it shows in the pathetic results.

fair enough LPP, do you feel better now you have got that off your chest? 

Norpig wrote:fair enough LPP, do you feel better now you have got that off your chest? 

ever so much better thank you. 

But I do seriously think selling the rights to Ch 5 was a major mistake by the FL based largely on how crap 5's infrastructure for multi-media broadcasting has proven to be in sports especially cricket. They really don't do it well and worse, they continue to act as though that's fine in the second decade of the 21st century. Honestly this isn't groundbreaking stuff, even ITV have managed to make it work. 

Personally I think Channel 5's entire broadcast centre for sports is actually some dude tapping away on his ZX Spectrum. And I may be insulting the venerable Sinclair machine by suggesting it.