Approximately half of all Watford’s Championship fixtures in the 2024/25 season will be shown live on Sky, either on TV or via their streaming service.

The new deal between the broadcaster and the Football League will see a total of 328 Championship matches available to view live next term – five each weekend.

And The Watford Observer understands that 12.30pm on Saturday will now become the ‘home’ of live EFL coverage with five matches shown in that slot each weekend.

They will be five games from across the Championship, League One and League Two, so while it’s unlikely they will ever show five Championship games at 12.30pm on Saturday, it is an option available.

It seems that there will be a ‘main game’ each Saturday at 12.30pm, with four other games also selected for live coverage.

Although not confirmed yet, it is understood the ‘main’ game would be shown on one of the Sky TV channels, while the other four would be available to stream.

That ‘main’ game could come from any of the three divisions.

Currently, all games on the closing day of the season are moved to the same kick-off time (this year 12.30pm on Saturday) so that a small number of games can be shown on TV.

Next season, all the games on the last day of the Championship campaign will be broadcast, as well as all opening-day fixtures in August.

What day/time slots these games will be shown at hasn’t been confirmed, but due to the integrity issues involving promotion/relegation on the final day of the season, it’s highly likely those matches will all be played on the same day at the same time.

Each Championship club will be involved in approximately 23 live league matches next season, although obviously it may be that some are featured more or less than others.

However, the new deal is aimed at giving more parity around teams featured, thus trying to avoid the situation this season where Leeds have had in excess of 30 league games shown live.

Of course, with all Carabao Cup fixtures being broadcast live as well, Watford will have at least one more match on TV or streamed.

With so many games not being played at 3pm on a Saturday from next season, the EFL and Sky have committed to confirming live games and their date/time far earlier than the five weeks’ notice currently given.

All matches selected for broadcast up to the weekend of the Third Round of the FA Cup in January will be confirmed before the season starts.

In monetary terms, it’s a deal that sees the EFL receive a substantial revenue uplift.

It represents a record domestic-rights deal worth £895m in guaranteed payments over a five-year period (£179m annual average).

That is an increase of £300m over the five-year period and £60m per season in comparison to the current agreement.

As a Championship club, it’s understood Watford can expect to be roughly 46% better off with this new Sky deal.

The EFL uses a formula for its distributable revenue depending on the values sourced from broadcast and other income but the current effective share is approximately Championship 70%, League One 18% and League Two 12%.

The uplifted element of the domestic broadcast deal is likely to be fed into the distribution calculation and be split between divisions on an 80% / 12% / 8% ratio.

The EFL received multiple bids from various parties that proposed a variety of different broadcast options for the EFL to consider, but the recommendation was to stay with Sky Sports and all 72 EFL clubs unanimously approved the deal.