Newcastle United’s Premier League game at West Ham United has been moved to Monday Night Football by Sky Sports.

The lads were originally due to travel to the London Stadium to face the Irons in the traditional 3pm slot on Saturday, 8th March. But the game will now be played on Monday, 10th March in the 8pm slot, much like the reverse fixture which United surprisingly lost 0-2 in November.

The change in date was announced by Sky Sports on the 24^th January, a mere six weeks’ notice, waylaying all best laid plans (especially those planning a weekend away around the game), and once again flipping a massive middle finger up to the average fan.

Fixture date changes for television broadcast are not something covered by the proposed new football regulator but it’s something I believe should be included in the bill once it has its final reading in parliament and becomes law.

Stop Exploiting Loyalty

The FSA’s #StopExploitingLoyalty campaign is rightly focused on ticket price rises and the removal of concessions at numerous clubs up and down the country, but games being moved with short notice, often to inconvenient times for the use of public transport, is also a huge symptom of football organisers exploiting fans’ loyalty.

West Ham fans experienced the same nonsense in November and whilst I can’t recall the specific train times, a quick glance at the LNER calendar for a train journey back up North on 10^th March after 10pm, shows four trains available each with a seven hour plus journey and one with a nigh-on four-hour journey – with the cheapest ticket (if you book it today) being £50.

The utter shambles that is public transport in this country mandates that United’s travelling fans will have to either stay over night (at great expense), drive back (at great expense), or get a coach (forcing many to take additional time off work).

Football Finances Downward Trend

Television money i.e. Sky and TNT Sports, has completely changed football in this country and after years and years of huge boom in rights sales, the last deal the Premier League signed in 2023 for £6.7 billion (a £1.5 billion jump from the rights deal in 2019 but over four years instead of five) was for the broadcast of 270 live games in the UK (a 70% increase from the 128 shown under the 2019 deal) which actually accounts for a ‘per game’ reduction in the value of Premier League domestic TV rights.

This recent downward trend in football finances has seen clubs switching back to trying to wring as much money out of the fans as possible, exploiting loyalty if you will, and Sky facilitates this through its hugely expensive TV packages at the expensive of match going fans for its TV audience.

Reems and reems is written about the Premier League’s uncompetitive financial rules and how they’re bad for the game, forcing clubs to exploit their academies, and practice ‘interesting’ accounting practices (and that’s a nice way of putting it) but match going fans have been at the forefront of shocking modern football practises for years – it must stop!