https://www.sports.legal/2016/12/the-saturday-afternoon-football-blackout-an-analysis/
https://www.uefa.com/news/newsid=19817.html
The blackout reportedly originated in the 1960s, when Burnley FC’s then Chairman Bob Lord agreed with his fellow Chairmen that televised matches on a Saturday afternoon would have a negative effect on the attendances of other football league matches that were not being televised. The outcome would be to reduce the clubs’ financial income. Lord was a staunch critic of televised football, even banning Match of the Day cameras from Turf Moor when the show was first launched. That ban is said to have remained in place for five years.
Fifty years later, the blackout remains in force in England between 2:45pm and 5:15pm on Saturday afternoons during the course of the football season. Yet, given the vast difference between the football landscape that existed in Lord’s time and the one that exists nowadays, there is a real question as to whether a justification for such rule remains.
