Portsmouth fans ‘to hold off on arrangements’ after Sky Sports update
Portsmouth fans are likely to be counting down the days to the start of the Championship season.
The Blues were involved in a relegation scrap for much of last season, but they finished the campaign strongly to register a 16th place finish.
Now, with new signing Adrian Segecic ready to debut for Portsmouth, and hopefully more recruits to come, John Mousinho and his team can begin to set their sights higher.
Sky Sports make important announcement about Championship fixtures
The Championship fixtures were announced this week, with Portsmouth being handed a relatively easy start to the next season.
This has traditionally been seen as a time when fans can start making arrangements for travelling to games.
However, the Fratton faithful would be well advised to hold off on making plans right now, given an announcement from Sky Sports.
Sky will be moving kick-off times for several EFL games that it wants to broadcast live, and it has now revealed when fans will find out about these rearrangements.
For all games up until the end of September, new kick-off times will be announced on 3 July.
There will then be another announcement before the start of the season for all games between 1 October and 10 January, 2026.
South Coast Derby is a dead cert to be rearranged
Portsmouth will take on Southampton in the league for the first time since 2012.
This battle between two bitter rivals would have been the first fixture that fans of both clubs looked for when the fixtures were released.
The first meeting between the two has been scheduled for Saturday, 13 September at 3pm at St Mary’s Stadium.
However, that game is a dead cert to be rearranged.
Sky will surely want to broadcast the game live, but broadcast laws state that this can’t happen on Saturday at 3pm.
| Portsmouth vs Southampton: last five fixtures | ||
| 24 April 2005 | Premier League | Won 4-1 |
| 13 February 2010 | FA Cup | Won 4-1 |
| 18 December 2011 | Championship | Drew 1-1 |
| 7 April 2012 | Championship | Drew 2-2 |
| 24 September 2019 | League Cup | Lost 4-0 |
And even if Sky didn’t want to show the game, Hampshire Constabulary will insist that the kick-off is moved to earlier in the day.
Many Pompey fans made this point online when the fixtures were released. They will discover the rearranged kick-off time for this fixture by 3 July.
Some Championship games for the opening weekend of the season have already been moved by Sky, but Portsmouth’s trip to Oxford isn’t one of them. That game remains a 3pm kick-off on Saturday, 9 August.
Sign up for the Pompey News WhatsApp channel and turn on notifications to have all the latest, breaking Portsmouth news sent straight to your phone.