Sky Sports will be showing six EFL games live in the first five days of the 2018/19 season. The fixtures for the new campaign were released at 9am yesterday and the details of the first games chosen for live broadcast by Sky Sports were revealed at the same time. Brentford will start the season with a game against Rotherham United on Saturday 4 August while Frank Lampard’s first game as Derby County manager is set to open proceedings live on Sky Sports a day earlier.
Derby will travel to the Madejski Stadium on Friday 3 August to take on Paul Clement’s Reading, ahead of the opening Saturday of the season, when two of the 33 matches taking place will also be screened live on Sky Sports. Throughout the course of the 2018/19 season, Sky Sports will exclusively show 127 live matches from the Sky Bet EFL season - including the Play-Offs - as well as 15 matches from the Carabao Cup and at least three from the Checkatrade Trophy.
Opening Sky Bet EFL matches selected for Sky Sports
*Nottingham Forest’s match against West Bromwich Albion has been moved to Tuesday 7 August from Tuesday 22 August to avoid a clash with the Test match taking place at Trent Bridge between England and India.
In addition to the opening Sky Bet EFL matches, the following ties from the Carabao Cup Round One draw have also been selected for broadcast live on Sky Sports.
As with 2017/18, the EFL and broadcast partner Sky Sports have again committed to give clubs and supporters at least five weeks’ notice ahead of any EFL League matches being selected for live television coverage. In a small change to the policy from 2017/18, the EFL has outlined the dates when any changes will be announced to the public via the EFL’s digital and social channels, rather than the dates when clubs will be initially notified. The dates will again ensure any fixture changes are announced with a minimum of five weeks’ notice of the fixture taking place in order to give EFL supporters as much time as is possible to allow for any alterations to travel plans that may be required.
In addition, an amendment to this policy was made in March 2018, whereby a minimum of three weeks’ notice was put in place for the penultimate weekend of the season in order to ensure the most appropriate matches are picked for broadcast.
SKY SPORTS ANNOUNCEMENT DATES 2018/19
(Illustrative but subject to a five-week minimum notice commitment)