Last season saw 'Friday Night Football' introduced in the Premier League but it soon became clear Sky Sports had made a mistake.Sky, having paid £4.18 billion in 2015 to retain their top-flight TV rights, were given 10 slots to televise live games on a Friday for the 2016/17 campaign but only ended up using four.Ratings plummeted when Jeff Stelling and Rachel Riley hosted the Friday night fixtures, three of which coming in the opening seven rounds of the season.A fourth then came on December 30, but Sky soon lost faith and pulled the plug by selecting zero Friday night games from January to April.The writing was on the wall from the outset, in truth, with Manchester United vs Southampton on Friday 19 August attracting just 811,000 viewers.In comparison, Arsenal's clash with Liverpool on Super Sunday five days previously garnered over 500,000 more viewers.Riley claimed watching football on a Friday night was the perfect scenario for football fans, but that proved not to be the case.It's unlikely 'Friday Night Football' will feature much in the 2017/18 season as a result, making the Premier League's latest proposals all the more bizarre.
According to the Times, top-flight clubs are considering playing their matches at 7.45pm on Saturday nights and perhaps even at 11.30am on Sunday mornings.By playing later at night on Saturdays and earlier on Sundays, Premier League matches will be made more accessible to fans across the world, such as in Asia and North America.In a nutshell, money is talking, and Premier League chairmen have discussed implementing the new kick-off times for the 2019/20 season.A final decision is expected to be made this autumn, but football fans are far from impressed with the proposals.In the eyes of many, 'Saturday Night Football' would make travelling to away games even harder for away fans and is a sign of disrespect from Premier League clubs.And regarding 'Sunday Morning Football', grassroots football could be made to suffer. Here's how Twitter reacted to the plans.
TWITTER REACTS
The Premier League could yet reject the idea of playing fixtures on Saturday nights, but as mentioned, money talks, making it very likely they'll be introduced for 2019/20.
Stephen Higham claimed in his tweet above that football is losing its identity - and he might just be right.