The Football League have announced three more Port Vale fixtures will be broadcast live on TV making it a total of six Vale games available to watch so far.
The fixtures are announced in batches and these latest games take us up to mid-November.
The matches selected are the home games against Stockport County and Plymouth Argyle as well as the away fixture at Bradford City. The Stockport game now moves to a Monday evening, the Plymouth game (sorry Argyle fans!) is an early kick-off and the timing of the Bradford game remains unchanged.
The Vale games at home to Cardiff City and away at Burton Albion have already been selected to be broadcast.
In addition to these five games, all the opening games of the season (so that includes Vale’s away trip to Rotherham) will be broadcast live.
Rearranged fixtures for TV broadcast
Port Vale vs Cardiff City
Thursday 7th August
8pm kick-off
Live on Sky Sports Football
Burton Albion vs Port Vale
Saturday 16th August
12:30pm kick-off
Live on Sky Sports+
Port Vale vs Stockport County
Monday 27th October
8pm kick-off
Live on Sky Sports Football
Port Vale vs Plymouth Argyle
Saturday 22nd November
12:30pm kick-off
Live on Sky Sports +
Bradford City vs Port Vale
Monday 29th December
7:45pm kick-off (unchanged)
Live on Sky Sports +
In addition to these games, Vale opening game at Rotherham United will be shown live on Sky Sports.
I do hope Vale get well paid by sky T.V. for this deal. Vale could easily be loosing anything up 3000 off each of these games. At £20 a ticket (to make things simple) that’s £180k. Vale lost potentially 4 of their best gates last season to Sky T.V. and NOT to mention the disruption to supporters. One can understand Premiership games been televised because basically almost all of them are sell outs, but not league one and league two, if people wanted to watch these games they’d make the effort to go to them!
Looking at reports elsewhere, League One clubs get around £900k on average from the Sky deal. So, with the TV fixtures announced for the first-half of the season, if you’re saying a loss of around £180k for that half of the season – then over the course of the whole season, Vale will be making a profit. Not a massive one but a profit.
I don’t think Vale have much of a choice sadly:
1. It’s a group decision – clubs can’t opt out and go it alone, the deal is negotiated on behalf of the whole Football League.
2. I think they have to accept all the changes in an attempt to bring in more revenue and try and mitigate the huge financial gulf between the Premier League and the Football League.
I just hope that now the regulator is in place that they have some teeth. They have been appointed from fans recommendations and with a focus on the fans and I hope this includes a say in sensible TV fixtures. After all, Vale aside, I really feel for the Plymouth fans asked to make it to Burslem for 12.30.
Am I going mad , the Bradford game , 29 th Nov isn’t a Monday?
The date was wrong in the club’s original release. Now corrected to December 29th. Thanks for spotting.
I do understand that individual clubs can not opt out of the sky deal, but little or no thought is given to supporters. We all must know of supporters who live out of the area which makes every home game an away game. One friend we have has a 3hour journey to attend games at Vale Park, 12.30 K/Os means he has to be up at 6am, and the 8pm K/Os means half a day off work and a 2am arrival back home. He now has to put up with 6 of these charges a season on top of the usual night matches. Surely clubs should reimburse these supporters who are loyal enough to buy season tickets yet have a quarter of the games turned into a travelling nightmare. You recently criticised Premiership teams for being money grabbing and with no consideration for fans and the smaller teams, but the same can be said at every level of the pyramid. Everyone has 2or3 kits a season. Stoke don’t offer to help the Vale financially, as Vale don’t help Crewe, and Crewe don’t offer help to Chester. Players make demands and clubs at all levels have to battle to meet these demands with usually total disregard for their fans.
@Ian Mountford – I live in Somerset and have a six hour round trip to Vale games, so I know personally the issues early kick-offs cause.
However, if clubs are desperate for TV money in order to exist (because the riches are hoarded elsewhere) I can’t see what else the League clubs can do but accept the deal on offer. There’s a blackout on Saturday afternoons so the options are either early or late kick-offs or switch to another day.
The problem clearly remains the Premier League (as I have consistently argued) because the vast majority of money in the game is controlled by them and that leaves the other clubs in a dog eat dog world scrabbling for the scraps. In that scenario is it any wonder the non-PL are only looking out for themselves? If we want a fairer game we need to start with looking at where all the games’ riches are – and once things are distributed better then there may be a chance of clubs supporting each other because there will be less desperation for money to survive. Furthermore, if the PL sees itself as the elite and pinnacle of the English game should it not morally be showing an example to lower clubs on how to show solidarity to other teams?
One of the roles of the new football regulator (which shock, horror the PL opposes) is to give fans a greater say. This is because the regulator was imposed following fans recommendations (again something the PL seemed to take offence at). I would imagine therefore that the regulator will look into such things as kick-off times for clubs some distance apart. No doubt with the Premier League filing multiple complaints via their expensive PR agencies