EFL introduce never-before-seen change to fixtures for first weekend of 2024/25 season and fans are furious

The EFL have announced a huge change to the fixture schedule for the first weekend of the 2024/25 Championship and League One seasons - and fans are not happy.

The fixtures for the Championship, League One and League Two were all announced on Wednesday at 9am.

Blackburn Rovers versus Derby County, as well as Preston North End vs Sheffield United, will kick off the Championship season on Friday night at 8pm. Both games are live on Sky Sports.

In fact, every EFL game from the opening weekend is live on TV, and will be shown on the new Sky Sports+ channel.

The new channel is available to all existing Sky Sports subscribers at no extra cost this season, and will broadcast more than 1,000 EFL games. Each team will be shown at least 20 times over the course of the campaign.

The EFL and Sky have committed to ensuring that all TV selections will be allocated for the period up to early January by the time the 2024/25 season has got underway.

In addition, all broadcast-selected matches will be allocated for the period to the end of September within seven days of the fixture announcement.

But UK football's 3pm blackout has not been lifted as part of the new-look opening weekend schedule for Championship and League One - meaning that there isn't a game on Saturday at 3pm in either of those divisions for the first time in EFL history.

And fans - particularly those with long away trips to begin planning for at an adjusted kick-off time - are not impressed with that particular change.

One wrote: "Most games should be on Saturday at 3pm. Stop ruining the game."

Twitter

A second added: "Why are the Saturday opening games starting at 12:30pm? The EFL need to explain, what's wrong with 3pm?"

A third noted: "Just speaks of how football's soul is completely lost to commerce that no Championship game opening weekend kicks off 3pm Saturday."

And a fourth claimed: "Fixture list all over the place. Get rid of the [blackout] rule and let them just do this for 3pm kick-offs."

A fifth added: "Not a single League One game at 3pm on the opening weekend, the game has well and truly gone."

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