Everton kick-off an hour early

The clocks go back - but our match is brought forward. 

Our home match against Everton on Sunday 29th October kicks off an hour early at 1:00pm - due to Greater Manchester Police.

Sky's prime weekend slot is the Sunday afternoon 4:30pm fixture. They want wherever possible to put the best match of the weekend in that slot subject to constraints of maxing out on showing a particular club. So they used one of their first pick options and chose the Manchester derby - Manchester United vs Manchester City for that time. Except in this case Greater Manchester Police objected to the match kicking off at 4:30pm and wanted it played earlier.

There's a nice simple solution to this - swap the match with the one scheduled for 2:00pm. But no, Sky don't want to diminish their main afternoon broadcast showing minor teams that are not part of their Big 6. So eventually a compromise is reached with the police and the match gets scheduled for a 3:30pm kick-off. But then someone points out that the broadcast of their filler match at 2:00pm would have to be stopped at half time so they can concentrate on the build up to their proper match.

So they see if they can reschedule the 2:00pm match to kick off at 1:00pm thereby giving them maximum time for the later match. And that is why our match against Everton kicks off at 1:00pm and you miss out on your hour extra in bed.