Southampton: Two early Saints Premier League fixtures chosen for television coverage

Two of Southampton’s early Premier League fixtures in the 2019/20 season have been chosen for UK TV coverage.

Main television rights holders Sky and BT have confirmed their choices for games that they are each going to screen in August and September.

Saints’ home clash with Manchester United is the first fixture to be picked and will be shown live on BT Sport

The same date of Saturday 31st August for the game will be kept but the kick-off time has moved to an earlier 12:30pm BST.

A second home game with Bournemouth has also been chosen and will be shown by Sky Sports on Friday 20th September at 8pm BST.

Sky currently own four of the seven packages of Premier League matches that have been given out, with one of those securing them Monday and Friday night matches.

Despite the added coverage and money that Saints will get from the clash with Bournemouth, the kick-off time may well be inconvenient for many fans.

More from Saints Marching

• Grading the Southampton Transfer Window Part 2: Arrivals
• Grading the Southampton Transfer Window Part 1: Departures
• It’s time to talk about Gavin Bazunu
• Rain clouds on the horizon? Southampton beat Plymouth Argyle
• A lament for Southampton legend James Ward-Prowse

BT own just two rights packages but reportedly paid out a combined £4.55bn with Sky to secure the main share of the televised games for three seasons from 2019 to 2022.

It has already been confirmed that Saints fans will be watching two of their side’s games in December on a different platform altogether from this year.

Amazon won game package F, which gives them the rights to 10 matches from December 3-5 and the full Boxing Day schedule.

This means that their home meeting with newly-promoted Norwich City and their trip to face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge will be streamed on the Amazon Prime Video Sport service.

The main figures that are spoken about in regards to the television coverage of the Premier League involve the money that has been spent.

Each top-flight side receives an equal share of this and other merit payments on top of that, with Saints said to have received £104m in the 2018/19 season.

However – with Amazon now on board – the number of different subscriptions that consumers have to commit to in order to watch their teams continues to grow.