I watch the Premier League (English Soccer), but I just looked up the NFL and it’s true there too. Matches start at the same time. WHY?! I would love to watch multiple matches – all I can do is pick one or kinda watch multiple screens? Surely it would also be better for business? There are ten Premier League matches a weekend. The earliest kick-off is 12:30, the latest is 20:00. There’s space for 5 matches a day!
i.e. 12:30 – 14:30; 14:30 – 16:30; 16:30 – 18:30; 18:30 – 20:30; 20:30 – 22:30.
So, How does it make business sense to hold matches at the same time when fans might want to watch more than one and thus be exposed to more advertising?
EDIT: To be clear, the current schedule for the premier League last weekend was 1 at 12:30, 5 games at 16:00 or so and 1 at 20:30. We already have staggered times! It’s just that the majority are cotemporaneous.
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For sports that play once a week, like football and soccer, you want to maximize viewers. The best time for viewers is on the weekend. On the weekend, people have time to spend 2-3 hours during the middle of the day to watch or go to a sporting event.
Since you want to play football an soccer during the weekend, you only have limited time to do it. In EPL for example, you have to fit 10 games. If each game is two hours from start to finish, that’s twenty hours of game time. People will only realistically watch games from 10 am to 6 pm, so you only have an eight hour window. You can’t fit 20 hours of games in 8 hours. As a result, you need to play some games at the same time.
For many tournament/League formats where a aggregate record for a league or group stage determines who advances, having the last matches all occur simultaneously helps prevent a scenario where a team could have no reason to expend effort trying to win a match with nothing to gain.
If a team decides to rest all their best players knowing they still advance with a loss, that tends to result in a lackluster match playing out.
[Even worse when both teams playing the last match have no reason to attempt to score](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n)
Some thoughts:
– as a season ticket holder for a major sports team, I’d be really annoyed if the games were at inconsistent times. I have to plan for game attendance
– players have routines with naps and meals and they would hate to be on a random schedule
– broadcast rights, at least in North America, make it so it’s hard to watch certain out of market games anyway
The problem with staggering the games like that is because people might not be available to watch all those games at the staggered time.
If all the football games take place at 10:00 on a Saturday, then the fans know to plan around a 10:00-12:00 break for the game. But if the matches were staggered, then that weekend plan would have to vary based on the schedule.
The truth is that with all games occurring each week at the same time, the broadcasters know that they will consistently get the most fans watching. If they keep moving the times around, they will only consistently get the most diehard fans, which is a much smaller demographic.
The NFL in the US is actually experimenting with more games starting at different times and on different days of the week, there are three time slots on Sunday, one or two on Monday, and one on Thursday.
It’s a tradeoff between letting fans view more games on TV and letting more teams play at a consistent time with the highest viewership.
In the US there’s also an issue of multiple times zones — the optimal times for viewing on the East and West coast are not the same.
Scheduling is hard enough as it is without having to juggle which teams get the good time slots with maximal viewership. And to be honest many teams are really only appealing to their home fans.
They tinker with the formula every time they renew the broadcast contracts, but it comes down to maximizing TV revenue, not maximizing the number of hours of live game a dedicated fan can watch in a week.
best to think of it is this:
you have more teams/matches than time slots available for people to watch during regular watching hours. if your game takes an hour, and you have three hours to broadcast, and six matches, there /will/ be overlap no matter what. there is no scenario where each match can have its own dedicated time slot.
with this in mind, the schedule is no longer focused on individual attention, but other factors like consistent schedule, fans not having having to switch at half time, etc
Another thing to consider: Convenience for away team fans to travel to stadium. At least in Europe most away fans travel to the match (and back) on the day of, making afternoon the ideal kickoff time.
Early morning matches would require an extra hotel night the night prior, which many can not or do not want to afford.
It didn’t use to be about television. There was no lived TV coverage of British football back in the day. The away team had to travel to the game on Saturday morning, as did their fans. Preferably you get the game over with while there is still daylight. That dictated a start time around 3pm.
But recently the rugby 6 nations tournament has been working that way, games one after the other.
Part of it is time zones and TV. Advertising pays the most, when shows are watched more.
For timezones, players don’t care about a possible 3 hour change 1 or 2 days before, because the game time will be at a consistent body time.
Sometimes you want a consistent gametime. That is to say you want a game that people can always watch at. This is better for season ticket sales as someone can know that they can commit to a season of games if they are on every Friday at 7pm as they can clear that time.
TV introduces complications and they want staggered kick offs.
Looking at the premiership next weekend there are 7 Saturday 3pm games, 1 saturday 5:30 game, 1 Sunday game and 1 Monday game.
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