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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They play with the schedule every year or so but NRL games are almost never played at the same time.
One Thursday, two Friday, three Saturday and two Sunday.
It’s meant to protect attendance: ie making sure the crowds are at the match and not all just watching from home or the pub.
To that end, the 3pm kickoffs are not allowed to be broadcast in England. You want to watch a game that starts at 3pm, you’ve got to get to the stadium!
(That’s called the 3pm blackout, if you want to look into it).
In Football World Cup, it already happened that teams that had no chances to pass the round robin / pool phase offered to another team the score difference that they needed to tie break with another team that finished their last match earlier that day
I think West Germany had a shady deal like this at the expense of Algeria 30+ years ago.
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