Sky Sports reveal details of £935m deal to Birmingham City, Wrexham, Stockport County and others

The EFL's lead broadcaster Sky Sports have announced the launch of a new channel, Sky Sports+ as part of their grand plans to ramp up the coverage of the English Football League.

It was announced this year that Sky Sports would be paying £935m to the EFL to broadcast their games over a five-year period with £40m in additional marketing benefits. As a result, there are major changes ahead as to when games will be scheduled, as well as how they can watch them.

The Sky Sports+ platform will launch and will allow customers to watch live streams through a mobile app and a dedicated new channel. The best part is that for the time being it is coming as no extra cost for those who subscribe to Sky Sports.

Customers will be able to enjoy over 50% more live sport this year with four times as many matches in the EFL and there being a promise that all 72 teams in the EFL will be featured over 20 times. Sky Sports + has the capability of showing up to 100 events concurrently.

The app will be launched in August in preparation for the 2024/25 season. Over a 1,000 games will be shown a season with every League One and League Two team being shown more than 20 times, and at least 24 times for the Championship. It will replace iFollow, a streaming service that was used by most EFL clubs when fans could not attend matches because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Birmingham City will begin their 2024/25 season in League One on Saturday, August 10. West Brom will start on the same day if they do not get promoted via the play-offs.

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports managing director, promised: “We are making a commitment to every club in the EFL and this is a big step-change for League One and Two. “This season, 20 of the 48 clubs in those divisions were not covered live even once.

“But we will also announce in July all the games we are screening live up until the first week in January.

"And by the start of November that will be extended to the beginning of March, to give fans as much notice as we can.”

All the opening fixtures in the Championship, League One and League Two games will be broadcast with the blackout rule which has been in place since the 1960s not in effect. It is possible because it only applies when 50% of Premier League and Championship are kicking off - but the top-flight of English football doesn't start until a week later.

As part of the new deal, every weekend there will be 10 matches across the three divisions. Six of those will appear on the Sky Sports + App with three Championship games shown at 12.30 pm on Saturdays along with two games each from League One and League Two.

Midweek fixtures and final day clashes will be shown live as well as Bank Holidays in Easter, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. As Birmingham are in League One next year, should they be playing during the international break then they will be shown too, as well as the Carabao Cup and Bristol Street Motors Trophy matches.

The EFL have today confirmed that the fixture release day for the 2024/25 season will be on Wednesday, June 26 at 9.00 am.