Around 110 of the 380 Premier League matches each season are never shown live in the UK, even if you pay for both Sky Sports and TNT Sports. Those missing games are the Saturday 3pm kick-offs, blocked by the UK's 3pm blackout rule.
The rule stops live football being shown on UK television and streaming between 14:45 and 17:15 on most Saturdays. It binds UK broadcasters, not the matches themselves, so broadcasters outside the UK show all 380 games legally.
TOD carries all 380 Premier League matches, including every Saturday 3pm kick-off, with English commentary, and starts from roughly £7/month on its annual Standard plan.
The 3pm football blackout is a UK broadcasting restriction that stops live football being shown during a set Saturday afternoon window. In short:
It dates to the 1960s. Burnley chairman Bob Lord pushed the Football League to keep Saturday afternoon football off television, on the argument that lower-league clubs playing at the same time would lose gate money to the broadcast. Sixty years on, that is still the stated basis for the rule.
UEFA's Article 48 lets national associations create a protected broadcast window. Very few do. UEFA's register of blocked broadcasting hours lists three: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
As BBC Sport explains, the rule does not apply outside the UK, so international broadcasters hold the rights to show 3pm Premier League kick-offs abroad. That distinction is the whole reason a legal route exists.
It was suspended during the behind-closed-doors 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons, then reinstated from 2021/22. An exemption was granted for two Saturdays over the 2025/26 Christmas period, 27 December and 3 January, but the Premier League chose not to schedule any 3pm kick-offs on those dates. It is expected to remain in place for the 2026/27 Premier League season, which runs from Saturday 22 August 2026 to Sunday 30 May 2027.
StreamLocator is a streaming-built alternative to a VPN. It does not replace your TOD subscription. It lets you access TOD's official Jordan stream from the UK, including the Saturday 3pm blackout matches that UK broadcasters cannot show.
From 2025/26 to 2028/29 the UK live rights are split between two broadcasters, with the BBC holding highlights:
That is 267 matches shown live. 380 minus those 267 leaves 113. Sky's 215 is a stated minimum rather than a fixed figure, so the exact count shifts from season to season: around 110 games a season have no live UK coverage. In practice these are the Saturday 3pm kick-offs caught by the blackout. The UK rights deal is worth £6.7bn across four years, and it still does not give fans a way to watch every fixture live at home.
TOD is the recommended official international option via Jordan. It has all Premier League matches, including the 3pm kick-offs, with English commentary. It is especially useful if you already pay for UK sports channels but still lose access to a large part of the fixture list.
The annual Standard plan is the cheapest genuine entry point.
TOD is intended for Jordan, so opening it from the UK normally runs into a location restriction. That location check is the access problem StreamLocator solves.
TOD works across the devices StreamLocator supports, including smart TVs, consoles, phones and browsers. One limitation is worth knowing before you subscribe: TOD has no native app for Fire OS devices, including Fire TV Stick. Fire Stick owners can use a browser or cast instead.
For the complete setup route, including supported devices, use our TOD outside Jordan guide.
Start with a free 7-day trial. StreamLocator starts at about £2/month on the two-year plan. See the pricing page for the full range.
Fubo Canada is the closest like-for-like alternative: every match, in 4K. The catch is payment. StreamLocator handles the location, but you will still need a Canadian payment method or a Canadian Apple ID with iTunes vouchers.
Peacock does carry the Saturday 3pm kick-offs, which fall at 10am Eastern in the US. What it does not carry is every match: the early and late kick-offs are usually assigned to USA Network. Picking those up needs a US live-TV provider login on top, such as YouTube TV, Hulu or Sling, plus a US payment method or a US Apple ID with iTunes vouchers.
The UK routes are the most expensive, and they still miss the 3pm kick-offs. NOW Sports runs from £27.99/month on its six-month saver up to £34.99 flexible, and a Sky Sports and TNT Sports bundle is £69/month on a 24-month contract. Sky Go follows the same UK rights limits, and TNT Sports standalone through HBO Max UK is £25.99/month on the 12-month saver. None of these UK routes solves how to watch 3pm Premier League games in the UK. If you are still wondering where you can watch 3pm Premier League games, the answer is an international broadcaster.
TOD is about £7/month and carries the Champions League, Europa League and La Liga alongside the Premier League. A Sky and TNT bundle is £60/month on a 24-month contract, covers the Premier League alone, and still misses the 3pm kick-offs.
It is under more pressure than at any point in its history, and it is still here. Two things are worth separating: the noise and the mechanism.
In short, if you are waiting for the rule to disappear so you can watch the 3pm games on Sky, do not plan your season around it.
A standard VPN can sometimes change your apparent location, but broadcasters actively detect and block known VPN address ranges. Live sport is where that enforcement is often toughest. StreamLocator is a streaming-built alternative to a VPN, designed for accessing official streaming services without the speed or quality loss that can disrupt a live match. It works across smart TVs, consoles, streaming sticks, phones and browsers, with quick setup.
This is about accessing an official, licensed international stream from your location, not replacing a subscription or finding an unofficial feed. For a related rights-split issue, our guide to where to watch Formula 1 explains why TOD is also useful for F1 viewers. US baseball runs its own blackout system for much the same commercial reasons, which we break down in our guide to MLB TV blackouts.
Because of a broadcasting rule known as the 3pm blackout. Between 14:45 and 17:15 on Saturdays, no live football may be shown on UK television or streaming services. The rule exists to protect attendance at matches being played at that time, and it applies to all football, not just the Premier League.
It is a UK broadcasting restriction that blocks live football coverage during a set Saturday afternoon window. It comes from UEFA's Article 48, which allows national football associations to protect a broadcast window. Three associations currently use it: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The closed period runs from 14:45 to 17:15 on Saturdays. It is triggered when half of the fixtures in the top two divisions are scheduled to kick off at 15:00.
Sky Sports shows a minimum of 215 matches per season and TNT Sports shows 52, which is 267 of the 380 played. That leaves around 110 matches a season with no live UK coverage. Because Sky's 215 is a minimum, the exact number shifts slightly from season to season.
The blackout is a restriction on UK broadcasters, not on the matches themselves. Outside the UK, international broadcasters hold the rights to show 3pm kick-offs, and watching an official, licensed stream from one of those broadcasters is a question of location rather than piracy. This is general information, not legal advice.
Not for now, though it is under more pressure than at any point in its history. See the section above for what has actually changed and how the rule would end if it did.
It was introduced in the 1960s, driven by Burnley chairman Bob Lord, to protect attendance at lower-league matches being played at the same time. The concern was that if fans could watch football on television at 15:00 on a Saturday, they would stop going to games. That reasoning still underpins the rule today.
No. The FA Cup final is exempt and can be broadcast live in the UK even when it falls inside the closed period.
UEFA publishes each association's declaration in advance, including the Saturdays that are excluded. For 2025/26 the English closed period ran from 23 August to 25 April with 11 Saturdays excluded, so Saturdays in May fall outside it entirely. A UK broadcaster cannot list a live 3pm Saturday kick-off inside the closed period, so anything on the Sky Sports or TNT Sports live schedule is either outside the window or covered by a specific exemption.
Yes. The closed period applies to live football shown in the UK, not only English matches. La Liga fixtures that kick off at 3pm are unavailable to UK viewers, and Serie A's 5pm matches often start inside the window, so UK coverage picks them up part-way through.
No. They are two separate things you pay for. TOD is the broadcaster and it carries the football, at about £7/month on its annual Standard plan. StreamLocator is the access layer that lets you reach TOD from the UK, from about £2/month on its two-year plan. StreamLocator does not resell or include anyone's streaming subscription. The upside of that split is that it is not tied to TOD: the same StreamLocator access works with F1 TV, MLB.TV, Peacock and the other services we support.
Legality and a service's own terms are two different things, and it is worth being clear about both. Watching an official, licensed broadcaster is a question of location rather than piracy. Separately, streaming services generally reserve the right to restrict access outside their intended territory, and those terms can change. In practice the risk sits with the service account rather than with you personally. Read TOD's terms before you subscribe and decide for yourself. This is general information, not legal advice.
The Saturday 3pm blackout means that even expensive UK sports subscriptions leave around 110 Premier League matches unavailable live. TOD via Jordan gives you official coverage of all 380, including the games UK broadcasters cannot show. Start your free StreamLocator trial, set your location to Jordan, and watch the full Premier League season.