IAN HERBERT: The end of the 3:00 p.m. TV lockdown is a runaway train hurtling down the tracks

Having introduced one of your children to football through the prism of Bury vs. Wrexham 0 Gigg Lane, 15 Jan 2000 means knowing League Two is on a Saturday afternoon in a world where screens and video clips and instant gratification the last scream.

A 2-0 win that day wasn’t much of a fulfillment, but there were sights, sounds and a communion of sorts.

The geyser that fuels the cups of Bovril. The choirs in the guest house end. The delirium after the goals. And when the memory doesn’t play, our boy sings the name of Peter Ward, a midfielder he’d never heard of before the game.

You don’t get that in a TikTok clip. “GameDay” is what they call Saturdays on talkSPORT. That pretty much sums up the best day of the week.

But Wrexham soon spent a decade on the brink of extinction, Bury went broke and while 3pm seems so sacrosanct amid the millions of alternatives to making appointments, at the same time and place at the game every week, few would deny that EFL clubs stand now at the crossroads.

DAZN has launched a lucrative offer to broadcast all games of the 2024/25 EFL season

The streaming platform has submitted a £200m bid that would see it air all 1,656 matches

Around 75 percent of them are technically insolvent – backed by investors because no money is coming in to cover players’ salaries.

The arrival of London-based streaming service DAZN, which is offering £200million a year – almost double the current TV deal – to stream every game and end the 3pm blackout on Saturday will certainly have an attraction .

It will be a moment of heavy symbolism should this earmarked period between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday be lifted.

The latest concession to the television rush the game has been trying to keep in check since Liverpool tried – and failed – to sell live coverage of their matches to the BBC and ITV in the 1970s. (Highlights were all they were allowed to publish.)

It will be up to the 72 EFL club owners to decide whether the league recommends the DAZN offering, but it will be a different electorate than it was when Burnley’s Bob Lord instigated the blackout more than 50 years ago – in the belief that this would prevent televised football from harming viewers at other matches.

There are many more foreign owners at the table now, including Americans who run Ipswich, Gillingham, Portsmouth and Wycombe and others. You will see beyond the wisp of cigarette smoke on the stadium entrance.

You will see the EFL’s appeal to the USA, which lacks quality club football and is completely lacking in the thrill of a football pyramid.

The choice is to take the plunge and snag the crowd that lies out there, or stay behind the protective veil of a blackout that will render EFL clubs unknown to most beyond our shores.

Football 3pm TV blackout preserves attendance traditions but potentially bars EFL clubs from much-needed payouts

“The 3pm blackout is a beautiful feeling and has an emotional appeal, but we have to look beyond attendance numbers and at the wider world,” says an EFL club owner.

DAZN would appear less glitzy if the ridiculous amount of money being sent by the Premier League were fairer and less rigged in favor of a select few.

Around half of the £460million paid out to the EFL are parachute payments from the Premier League.

That allows six or seven relegated Premier League clubs to sit comfortably between the Championship and the Premier League, while clubs in the highly competitive League One receive £720,000 each. There’s only £480,000 for League Two clubs.

“The only way for the rest of us to make ourselves profitable is to find an academy player and sell it or find new media platforms,” ​​says the EFL owner. “It is a fact that the world is media driven now. It’s a big leap into the abyss, but it has to be taken.’

Other reasons why the 3pm blackout is something of value goes to the heart of football in British society. It protects attendance at matches and participation levels in grassroots sport.

It’s an important consideration, says Brian Barwick, former head of FA and BBC and ITV football. “It doesn’t mean we should get stuck in the mud, but it has provided protection for many decades.” Barwick also points to the role TV deals played in the game’s development.

In truth, it’s hard to find evidence that televised football harms viewers on the highways and back roads of professional football. The more football that is shown on TV, the higher the viewership figures seem to be. EFL games were streamed at 3pm during the World Cup but attendance surged.

Among those ready to sweep away the blackout are Bristol Rovers CEO Tom Gorringe and Bolton’s Neil Hart, and the game is already partly over and even the FA Cup final is a moving feast.

The tradition of attending 3pm games that a new TV deal could jeopardize is an important part of our relationship with football

Watching the game on a screen cannot emulate the delirium of seeing a goal from the stands

The FA are now considering lifting the FA Cup blackout in the post-2025 TV cycle so they can sell more games and make more money. It seems this train is speeding down the tracks, however much we wish to stop it and hold on to one of the kicks of our sporting lives.

In an exhibition titled Going to the Match currently on at Bolton Museum, a photo of fans waiting to enter the Paddock Wing grandstand in old Burnden Park makes you stop and stare.

The queue is so long that it would cause complaints today, but no one seems to care much. The supporters stand there, in serious conversation, wrapped up against the cold, undisturbed of course by any telephone. It’s almost certainly just before 3pm on a Saturday.

This kind of community is becoming increasingly rare, a means of maintaining it seems to be slipping away, and that is all the more unfortunate. But the world keeps turning.