The Saturday 3pm blackout: what a pub can legally put on its screens, and how to make the slot pay anyway

From 2.45pm to 5.15pm on a Saturday, no live football can go out on UK television, and a pub screen is no exception. It isn't a Sky rule. It's football's own rule, allowed under UEFA's Article 48, and it covers foreign leagues too, so the Spanish game kicking off at 3.15pm isn't on either. Radio commentary sits outside it. And whatever the time, showing football through a foreign satellite feed, a home subscription or a customer's phone plugged into your telly is how licensees end up paying the Premier League or Sky four and five figure sums. Here's what you can legally show, what you can't, and how to stop Saturday afternoon being three hours of nothing.

I get asked this every season by someone who's just been told by a mate that a pub down the road "gets all the 3pm games". They probably do. Until somebody walks in and counts the logos.

Where the blackout actually comes from

Article 48 of the UEFA Statutes gives UEFA and each national association the exclusive right to authorise broadcasts of matches under their jurisdiction. The regulations that sit under it let each association pick two and a half hours on a Saturday or a Sunday during which "any Transmission of football may be prohibited" in its country. The window has to be set at least 14 days before the season starts and then runs all season.

England's window is 2.45pm to 5.15pm on a Saturday. It goes back to the 1960s, when Burnley's chairman Bob Lord argued that televised games would empty the terraces at every other ground, and the principle hasn't moved since: keep people going to matches, including the non-league and youth games down the road.

Two details catch people out. The regulations say they apply equally to domestic and foreign football, so the blackout isn't only about the Premier League and the EFL. And they only cover intentional television transmissions, which is why radio is free to carry 3pm commentary.

It isn't going anywhere soon. The Premier League's UK deal that started in 2025/26 lifted the number of live games from 200 to 270 a season, with Sky taking at least 215 and TNT Sports 52, and the 3pm blackout was protected for the length of it, to 2029.

What you can and can't put on a pub screen

What's on the screen	Legal in a pub?	Why
A 3pm Saturday Premier League or EFL game, live, on any feed	No	Inside the blackout, and no UK broadcaster holds it. A foreign channel or a streaming box doesn't change that
A foreign league game kicking off inside the window	No, not live on UK TV	The blackout covers foreign football as well as domestic
Radio commentary of the 3pm games through your speakers	Yes	The blackout is television only. The music on that station still needs your music licence
Other live sport on your commercial package at 3pm	Yes	Racing, rugby, cricket and the rest aren't football
A scores and reaction programme on your commercial package	Yes	No live match pictures
The early and late Saturday kick-offs on Sky or TNT Sports	Yes, with a commercial agreement	These are the televised slots, and they're the pub's match days
Any match on a home Sky subscription	No	Commercial premises need a commercial agreement in the pub's name
A customer's Sky Go or streaming app cast from their phone to your TV	No	A Scottish court found exactly this infringed Sky's copyright, see below

The Premier League's own line is blunt: the only legitimate way for a pub, club or other commercial premises in the UK to show its matches is a commercial subscription with one of its authorised UK broadcasters. These days that means Sky or TNT Sports.

"But the landlady won in Europe"

This is the bit everybody half remembers. Karen Murphy ran a pub in Portsmouth and showed Premier League games through a Greek decoder card that was cheaper than Sky. She was prosecuted, fought it to the European Court of Justice, and in 2012 the High Court quashed her criminal conviction, because she'd paid for the Greek service and so hadn't dishonestly dodged a charge.

What gets left out of the pub retelling is the other half. The same rulings found that showing the broadcast in a pub could still infringe copyright in the bits wrapped around the football: the Premier League logos, the graphics, the anthem played over the opening sequence. A copyright lawyer at Pinsent Masons said at the time that it was "very difficult for pub landlords to show games without infringing the copyrights" in that coverage. Her conviction went. The problem for every other pub didn't.

Suppliers then sold logo masking kits to get round it. In 2015 the Premier League announced that twelve pubs had been ordered to pay £92,603 in costs between them for showing its games on foreign satellite systems, single pubs paying between £5,500 and £9,825, and it said several of the North East pubs involved had been using logo masking. It didn't work.

My view, for what it's worth: the Murphy argument was built on buying a decoder from another EU country. I wouldn't bet a personal licence on it in 2026.

Customers' phones count too

The newest trap isn't a dodgy box at all. In a 2024 case at the Court of Session, Sky v Airlie, a Dundee pub with no Sky subscription for the matches let regulars connect Sky Go on their own phones to the pub's screens so everyone could watch together. The court found the pub had infringed Sky's copyright in the graphics, granted a permanent interdict (Scotland's version of an injunction) and made the pub pay to publish the decision. It didn't award damages that time. Other pubs haven't been so lucky: in April 2022 Sky announced that four Scottish licensees had each been ordered to pay £10,000 in damages, plus Sky's costs and the cost of advertising the orders in the local press.

Sky's compliance team said at the time that it visits "thousands of pubs every season" to check what they're showing, and warned that licensees risk damages, costs "and/or losing their personal licence". You don't have to like the price of the subscription to see that the downside is far bigger than the saving.

Making the 3pm slot pay without the football

Saturday on a match day is two peaks with a gap in the middle. Treat it like that instead of fighting it.

Put the radio on. Commentary of the 3pm games is legal and it keeps the room in the afternoon in a way a silent screen doesn't. Check your music licence covers playing the radio, because the songs between the goals are still music. The pub music licence guide has the 2026 figures.

Use the screens for what is legal. Scores coming in, the late kick-off time, the next home game, tonight's quiz, the food offer. A screen telling people what's on later does more for the 5.30pm crowd than a blank one. Other sport on your commercial package fills the gap well, racing especially.

Use the gap for the cellar. This is the one most pubs miss. Between the early game and the late one is the quietest hour you'll get all day, so it's when you change the barrel that's on its last legs, refill the fridges and check the busy lines, instead of doing it with a queue three deep at 5.25pm. If you're not sure how much a busy Saturday gets through, the par levels guide and how many pints are in a keg will get you there.

Know whether match days pay at all. A commercial subscription is the biggest discretionary bill in a lot of pubs. The only honest way to know if it earns its keep is to compare match days with plain days, in pints actually poured, over a month. I set the method out in what Sky Sports costs a pub, along with the pints a week each bill needs.

The honest limits

I'm a licensee, not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice. The blackout itself is a football scheduling rule. What gets pubs into trouble is copyright and the broadcasters' commercial terms, and those cases turn on their facts. If a supplier tells you their box or their foreign card is fine for pubs, ask them to put that in writing and to cover your costs if they're wrong. Watch how quickly the conversation ends. The Premier League's own advice to publicans in 2015 was to "ignore the lies peddled by suppliers" and go to the authorised broadcasters, and nothing in the cases since has made that advice look wrong.

Common questions

What time is the Saturday football blackout?

2.45pm to 5.15pm on a Saturday in England. No live football, domestic or foreign, can be broadcast on UK television in that window, and it applies in pubs exactly as it does at home.

Can a pub show 3pm games from a foreign channel?

Not without serious risk. The blackout means no UK broadcaster has those games, and the courts have found that showing a foreign broadcast in a pub can infringe copyright in the logos, graphics and anthem. Pubs have been ordered to pay thousands in costs, including ones using logo masking kits.

Can I play the radio commentary of the 3pm games in my pub?

Yes. The blackout only covers television. You'll still need your music licence to cover playing the radio, because the station plays music around the commentary.

Can customers cast Sky Go from their phones to the pub TV?

No. In Sky v Airlie in 2024, Scotland's Court of Session found a pub that let regulars connect Sky Go to its screens had infringed Sky's copyright, granted a permanent interdict and made the pub pay to publish the decision. A home or personal subscription doesn't cover a pub.