St Stephen's Day could be left with just one Premier League match

St Stephen's Day lands on Friday, which has one broadcast slot

FESTIVE FAMINE: The traditional Christmas football schedule is being squeezed. Pic: Steve Bardens/Getty 

The traditional St Stephen's Day feast of top-flight football may end up looking like leftovers this winter, with a squeezed calendar meaning there may be only one Premier League fixture.

St Stephen's Day lands on a Friday and that has left the Premier League with a scheduling conundrum because of an expanded Champions League and a commitment to preserving a platform for the FA Cup.

The league must deliver 33 weekends of fixtures as part of its commitment to broadcasters and is struggling to locate another weekend to play games should at least half of the matches, as is tradition, be moved to St Stephen's Day.

On a standard Premier League weekend fixtures are, by default, played at 3pm on Saturday unless they are moved to a specified broadcast slot. This season, for the first time, all games not played during the Saturday 3pm blackout are being shown live, but there is only one broadcast slot reserved for a Friday.

Any St Stephen's fixture selection is likely to prove controversial, even if there is only one match, given the absence of most public transport. Despite a commitment to announce its TV picks for December and January by 15 October, the league has amended its fixture programme only until 22 December. The EFL has a full St Stephen's Day programme.

The last time St Stephen's Day fell on a Friday, in 2014, there was a full round of top-flight games, with Raheem Sterling scoring for Liverpool in a 1-0 win against Burnley and Wayne Rooney recording a brace and an assist for Robin van Persie in a 3-1 Manchester United victory over Newcastle. Eight Premier League games were played on St Stephen's Day last year, five took place in 2023, and seven in 2022.

The expectation is that any change to tradition will be reversed in 2026, with St Stephen's Day on a Saturday. But the expansion of the Champions League, meaning league stage fixtures are played in January, and a related commitment to ensure the FA Cup has exclusive weekend scheduling in the fourth, fifth and quarter-final rounds, are calendar obligations that will remain for the foreseeable future.

Guardian