Imagine a game of chess, assembling a jigsaw, solving a Rubik’s cube, or playing Jenga—these are just a few metaphors industry experts use to describe the intricate and often contentious process of selecting Premier League matches for television broadcast. This task is one of the season’s most complex challenges.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Premier League disclosed the latest match selections by Sky Sports and TNT for the upcoming festive period. However, these announcements are incomplete, with decisions regarding the Christmas schedule and beyond still pending.

This means that a significant portion of the televised fixtures for December and January remains unconfirmed, surpassing the initially anticipated announcement timeline.

What criteria do Sky and TNT use for their selections? Why is the process so prolonged, and what obstacles do they encounter?

Daily Mail Sport has attempted to unravel this intricate puzzle. In essence, the process is anything but straightforward.

So, how many TV packages are there? 

The most recent domestic deal, announced in December 2023 and worth a staggering £6.7billion, is made up of five different packages from A to E.

Sky Sports won the rights to four of them – B, C, D and E – which means they will broadcast at least 215 live Premier League games a season.

That covers their flagship Super Sunday slot at 4.30pm, their Sunday 2pm kick-offs as well as matches on Friday, Saturday and Monday night and three midweek blocks. For the first time ever, they will also broadcast every game on the final day.

TNT won package A for 52 live matches, which covers the Saturday 12.30pm lunchtime kick-off and two other midweek rounds.

Amazon, who spent six years as rights holders, chose not to get involved in the auction process. Their small 20-game package, showing two rounds of midweek matches, was no longer available and the sums were simply too big to punt for the other packages.

Right, so how do the picks work?

Anyone who has followed NFL or played fantasy football over the years will be au fait with the idea of a draft pick. Each team takes it in turns to select the player they want. A bit like picking teams in the playground. One picks, then the other, then back again until the useless lad with two left feet is left to go in goal.

It’s the same principle here. Each package entitles each broadcaster to a certain number of first, second, third, fourth or fifth picks. Sky always pick first. Eighteen of them are for the Sunday 4.30pm slot, 14 for Saturday at 5.30pm. TNT can then go second 18 times or fourth 14 times.

Sky tell TNT their first picks for the block two to four weeks before the televised matches are due to be released. They discuss them over the phone before confirming them via email.

Then they wait. Then the games begin. Sky wait to see if TNT want to use one of their second picks or to hand the baton back and wait for a fourth. In the mean-time, both broadcasters try to anticipate what move their competitors will make, which match they will pick, and plan accordingly.

These two rivals have been going at it long enough by now to have a decent gut feeling for how the other will move.

How do they decide who to pick?

Sky, naturally, will pick the biggest game of the weekend first. That’s usually an obvious choice.

As soon as Sky get hold of the fixture list, usually about 48 hours before everyone else, bosses run their finger down it and pick out all the big head-to-heads. When do Liverpool play Manchester United? When’s the north London Derby? When are Sunderland playing Newcastle?

They circle them all and whack them into a spreadsheet. These are the games they want, their nailed-on first picks.

Some weeks, it’s not so obvious. Earlier this season, the Merseyside derby, Manchester United versus Chelsea and Arsenal against Manchester City all played over the same weekend. Not quite as clear.

In the end, Sky opted for title contenders Arsenal and City, knowing that TNT would likely cash in one of their second picks and snap up Everton’s trip to Anfield, and that they would still be left with another match at Old Trafford that would draw in big numbers.

Because that is, of course, what they want. They haven’t paid the lion’s share of nearly £7bn to pick games no one wants to watch.

So, as well as looking for the big match-ups, the broadcasters work out who they think will win the League and work backwards. They want to pack their early picks for the season with big teams, big names and big narratives to attract big viewing figures – is Ruben Amorim under pressure already at United? Are Arsenal finally the real deal under Mikel Arteta now they have a striker? – but they also know they can’t choose the same teams in the same slots every week so must keep a few picks up their sleeves for later in the season so they can tell the story of the title race.

So, there’s a maximum number of times a team can play in each slot?

Yes. How often did we hear Jurgen Klopp moan about Liverpool being put in the 12.30pm Saturday ‘breakfast’ slot. Among other things, he labelled it ‘a crime’, ‘insane’ and half-jokingly called for Amnesty International to get involved.

Well, there are limits. When the Premier League announced the new deal, they stated that a team could only be selected a maximum of six times for the Saturday lunch-time slot and evening kick-offs. Each team must be picked once.

For the others, including the flagship Sunday 4.30pm slot, a team must be picked twice during the season and no more than five times.

That’s why Sky and TNT need to keep some picks in the bank. On weeks where there is not standout fixture, the broadcasters see it as a chance to tick a few smaller clubs off the list. It won’t get the numbers that Liverpool or City would, but they might need them come April and May.

Broadcasters are more likely to pick Liverpool away from home because there’s a higher chance of seeing an upset. Mo Salah needing to score a 90th-minute penalty at Burnley, for example. If that game was at Anfield, it wouldn’t have been picked.

‘It’s a bit of a game of chess,’ said one insider involved in the process.

Still, they have their ways and means. Clubs are only supposed to be picked in the 4.30pm Sunday slot five times a season yet by the time we reach December, only a third of the way through the season, Arsenal will already have played there six times.

That, it turns out, is because Sky are allowed to combine their packs and aggregate the selection numbers. Maximum selections of five in one slot and six in another can suddenly become 10 in one and one in the other.

They can also use up a first pick for a Super Sunday or Saturday Night Football slot on a game they know is unlikely to be played there. The north London Derby in previous seasons (though it is scheduled to be played on Sunday at 4.30pm next month) and Liverpool against United, for example. Sky will want that as a first pick, otherwise TNT will take it, so will snap it up. It just might end up as their Monday Night Football for example, like with Liverpool v United a couple of years ago.

Some might call these tricks of the trade, others might call them loopholes. Some might see it as broadcasters getting their money’s worth, others as fans just being ignored once again.

Does anything else have to be taken into consideration?

Oh yes. And here’s where it gets even more complicated. We know by now that teams who play in the Europa League or Conference League can’t play on Saturday so are often moved to Sunday at 2pm. With so many English teams in Europe, Sunday lunchtime has quickly become the new Saturday 3pm.

But games also cannot be played on a Friday night on the back of an international break. They can’t be played on a Monday night going into an international break or if there’s Carabao Cup fixtures that week.

Teams can’t play on a Sunday if they are in Champions League action on Tuesday. That’s why Tottenham played Wolves at 8pm on a Saturday night earlier in the season.

It’s why Sky couldn’t pick Leeds v Liverpool at Elland Road on a Sunday in December because Arne Slot’s side face Inter Milan on Tuesday night. Wednesday night, fine, but not Tuesday.

There’s also an agreement in place that if teams are away from home in the Champions League on Wednesday and get picked by TNT, it will get moved to Saturday at 8pm.

For the jam-packed Christmas schedule, recovery times for each team in between selections are taken into account for each round, whether opponents played on a Saturday or a Sunday in the previous fixture.

Sky are understood to have had three different versions of their Christmas picks, a Plan A, B and C, depending on what matches were available to be played at different times.

This is where the jigsaw comes in.

So, why do they get delayed?

At the start of the season, the Premier League publish the timeline for when they hope to announce the televised fixtures throughout the season. At the top of the final column reads ‘date of estimated release’.

The Premier League are always keen to emphasise that third word: estimated. They are also keen to insist that, even if they drag beyond that date, they are still announced within six weeks of the games taking place. But why do they keep dragging on like that?

As one insider put it: ‘If one game isn’t ready, none of them is ready. It’s like a game of Jenga. If one thing doesn’t fit, it can impact other games as well.’

Every selected match in that round must be given the complete sign-off before the fixtures can be announced. If nine are ready, none are ready. If one can’t be played at a certain time, it might have to move into another slot and swap with another match, impacting other teams. Broadcasters might have to make another pick and part of the process starts again. 

Often it’s just one local authority issue, in one game, that holds up the rest. 

Once Sky and TNT make their selections, the home clubs consult with local councils and safety advisory groups and the police forces to ensure that those games can go ahead. Is the game high risk? Is there too much drinking time? What’s the travel like? Can it be policed sufficiently? Are there other events in the city that mean it can’t be played at that time?

In November, Liverpool’s game with Aston Villa at Anfield is being played at 8pm on TNT. That would have been the 12.30pm pick but England are playing Australia at rugby league at Hill Dickinson Stadium in the afternoon and would spread the police and local authorities too thinly.

Nottingham Forest have had to move games at the City Ground if cricket matches are being played at Trent Bridge. Sheffield United against Chelsea was shifted a couple of years ago because a half-marathon is running past Brammall Lane.

Clubs fill in a document at the start of the season flagging events that will mean matches can’t be staged at certain times. The Notting Hill Carnival, for example. But these things are not always so foreseeable.

So, too, how deep English teams will go in Europe. Nine clubs, nearly half the top flight, are involved in European competition whose group-stage and knockout draws will come after the Premier League’s announcements.

That’s why we’re seeing more ‘conditional picks’. That’s when games get moved from their initial time of Saturday and 3pm to another for television, but with a footnote that it could change again.

At the start of the season, the Premier League warned that more matches could move at ‘relatively short notice’ because of it. In their September fixture amendments, the Merseyside derby moved to 12.30pm on Saturday but with the caveat that it would shift to Sunday at noon if Liverpool were drawn to play away in the Champions League the previous Wednesday. In the end, they weren’t. Tottenham against Wolves was initially moved to a Sunday at 2pm on the proviso that Spurs weren’t in European action the following Tuesday. In the end, they were, and it moved.

The Premier League, who have regular meetings with UEFA to discuss fixtures, expect similar to happen again for the March fixtures, which will be announced in January. The Champions League round of 16, played in March, however, won’t be drawn until the end of February.

What’s happened this time?

The Premier League have only been able to announce the rounds up until Christmas because they are the only ones that are fully signed off. League sources insisted they felt it better to split the announcements up to give supporters chance to at least sort travel and accommodation for some of the games.

Daily Mail Sport knows of one selected game over the Christmas period, not one you’d class as a humdinger, that was looking likely to hold up the process.

Daily Mail Sport also understands conversations are ongoing over whether matches will even take place on Boxing Day, a long-standing tradition of English football. That, like most things in this process, is complicated.

Due to the expanded UEFA competitions and the FA Cup having three weekends to themselves without top-flight fixtures for the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds, it means the Premier League have fewer weekends in which to fit their games. One of them has to be the weekend of the 27th, that just happens to fall the day after Boxing Day. It remains to be seen how many, if any, will be able to be moved.

What impact does this have on fans?

The Premier League and the broadcasters maintain that the minimum of six weeks between the fixtures being announced and the first game of that round is ample time to sort out travel plans (even if some might still change following European draws…)

For many supporters, however, it’s not even the amount of time they have to sort their plans – ones that they may still change – that’s the issue.

The latest announcement leaves United with three Monday night fixtures in the space of five weeks and two early kick-offs in London.

One of those 8pm kick-offs happens to be 250 miles away in Bournemouth.

Chelsea travel to Leeds on a Wednesday night for an 8.15pm kick-off for a game that won’t finish until after 10pm. The last train back to London leaves at 9.43pm.

The cheapest hotel within two miles of the stadium on Hotels.com at the time of writing was £60 a night. You imagine they won’t stay at that price for long.