A cornucopia of football' Record number of games televised live this season

This football season will be the most-watched and lucrative in UK history, with a record number of live televised games and seven-day-a-week viewing for fans.

- Mark Sweney

The football boom is a timely boost for Sky and the BT-Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) joint venture TNT Sports, which will air almost all of the prestige games, as competition for viewers' attention from US streamers increases.

It is estimated that there could be more than 1,500 matches broadcast in the UK this season involving English teams playing in competitions including the Premier League, Champions League, English Football League (EFL) and FA Cup.

Sky will be hoping the Lionesses' Euros triumph will boost audiences for the Women's Super League when the season kicks off with the champions, Chelsea, hosting Manchester United on 5 September.

The pay-TV broadcaster will air this match as part of a new five-year rights deal, under which nearly every WSL match will be broadcast live either by Sky - up to 118 a season - or the BBC, with up to 21.

"It is a cornucopia of football," says Francois Godard, a sports media analyst at Enders Analysis.

"Certainly it will be the biggest we've ever seen in terms of numbers of viewers."

As the Premier League season gets under way fans can look forward to seeing a third more matches on TV - a record 267 - under the new £6.7bn, four-year contracts with Sky and TNT Sports.

Sky's £5.1bn swoop for four of the five live packages at the last auction in 2023 marked its biggest win since Rupert Murdoch snatched the rights from free-to-air TV in 1992 and changed the face of British football. It also resulted in Amazon withdrawing from streaming live Premier League action in the UK.