Every year Leeds United fans are moved and shunted around the timetable to suit the Sky Sports schedule. This season has been particularly bad and it comes off the back of Andrea Radrizzani and his up and coming Eleven Sports winning the La Liga rights ahead of Sky Sports in the summer.
📺 | Three of our fixtures (Aston Villa, Forest, Derby) in December and January have been selected for live broadcast on Sky Sports
— Leeds United (@LUFC) November 8, 2018
All three of the games are standard now for Sky Sports but it feels like this season more than the previous ones Sky are really manipulating the system. Leeds are currently in a stretch of games that sees eight of nine live on TV, none of which are 3pm Saturday kick-offs. Yes some are via the red button midweek and that seems like good business for Sky but the weekend games are giving the fans who go to games the run around.
Radrizzani won the rights for many leagues and competitions this summer and one of them was La Liga, one of the most watched leagues on the planet. It left Sky Sports with a huge problem. They don’t have the Champions or Europa League rights, the La Liga or Serie A rights and are left with some Premier League games, the Football League and the Scottish Premiership. This isn’t what Sky Sports subscribers would expect when the bills keep going up.
Luke Ayling and Pontus Jansson may have wound Sky Sports up in recent weeks as well. Jansson was band for comments and swearing live on TV after the Brentford game and Luke Ayling tweeted to Leeds fans suggesting they should sing louder when chanting “Sky TV, is fu*king sh*t”. Leeds and Sky don’t really see eye to eye anyway, certainly when it comes to the fans anyway, and this latest revelation hasn’t gone down well, but isn’t a surprise either.