Two subscriptions. That is the short answer for the 2026/27 season, and it is a simpler answer than it has been for years. Sky Sports and TNT Sports hold every live Premier League match shown in the United Kingdom this season, after Amazon failed to renew its package in the current rights cycle.
The longer answer is more interesting, because "every live match shown in the UK" and "every match" are not the same thing, and the gap between them is larger than most people realise.
What Sky Sports shows
Sky carries at least 215 matches, which is comfortably the largest package ever sold in a domestic Premier League deal. More than 140 of those fall at weekends. The rest are spread across Friday and Monday evening slots and three full midweek rounds, where Sky shows every game in the round rather than a selection.
That volume is the reason Sky can guarantee something it previously could not: if your club is on television at all in a given week, it is far more likely to be on Sky than anywhere else, and the odds of a full midweek round passing you by have effectively gone.
What TNT Sports shows
TNT holds around 52 matches. The package is smaller but it is not the leftovers, because it carries one genuinely valuable exclusive: the Saturday 12:30 kick-off. That is the marquee early slot, and it is on TNT every week without exception. TNT also shows two complete midweek rounds.
Worth noting for anyone making a longer-term decision: 2026/27 is the last season of TNT's current Premier League arrangement, so the shape of the following cycle will look different again.
The 113 matches nobody in the UK can watch
Sky's 215 and TNT's 52 add up to 267. A Premier League season contains 380 matches. That leaves 113 games that are not broadcast live in the UK on any channel, legally, at any price.
Almost all of them sit in the Saturday 3pm slot, and they are missing because of a rule that predates the Premier League entirely. UK broadcasters are barred from showing live football between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on Saturdays, a restriction introduced so that televised football would not empty the terraces at lower-league grounds kicking off at the same time.
It is genuinely contested whether the rule still does what it was designed to do, and it has survived several serious challenges. What matters practically is that it is still in force, it applies to every UK broadcaster equally, and no subscription of any kind gets you around it. If your club is at home at 3pm on a Saturday, the options are the ground, the radio, or waiting for the highlights.
This is also the honest context for the streaming portals that aggregate fixture listings. They publish schedules covering the full 380-match calendar rather than the 267 that UK broadcasters carry, which is why they surface in searches for exactly the games Sky and TNT do not show. Where a match is available through an official broadcaster, that broadcaster will give you the better picture and the more reliable stream, and we would point you there first every time.
What it actually costs
There is no single price, because both broadcasters sell several ways in.
| Route | What it covers | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Sky Sports via satellite or Stream | The full 215-match Sky package | Watching most weeks across a full season |
| NOW Sports membership | The same Sky Sports channels, no contract | Watching in bursts, or only during the run-in |
| TNT Sports via Discovery+ | The 52-match TNT package including Saturday 12:30 | The early kick-off, plus European football |
| TNT via Sky, BT or Virgin | Same content, added to an existing TV bill | Anyone already with one of those providers |
Buying both outright across a full season runs into the hundreds of pounds. The lever most people miss is that NOW sells Sky Sports on rolling monthly and day passes, so if you only care about a specific stretch of the season, you are not obliged to buy the whole thing.
The free options, and their limits
Full live matches are not free in the UK this season. What is free is substantial in its own way:
- Match of the Day on BBC One, still the main Saturday-night highlights programme, free with a TV licence.
- BBC Sport online, which posts clips and highlights shortly after full time.
- Occasional free-to-air matches, which Sky has made a habit of for selected fixtures, though these are announced case by case rather than scheduled in advance.
If you are following European nights as well, the Champions League league phase now runs on a completely different format.
Watching from outside the UK
Everything above describes UK rights specifically, and rights are sold country by country. The 3pm blackout is a UK broadcasting restriction, so overseas broadcasters show those matches without issue. That is why a viewer in Dublin, Lagos or Sydney can often watch a fixture that a viewer in Manchester cannot.
If you are outside the UK, the question to ask is not "how do I get Sky" but "who holds the rights where I am", because the answer is frequently a broadcaster that offers a better package for less than the UK equivalent.
Before you plan around a kick-off time
Times move. Matches get selected for broadcast, rescheduled around European fixtures, or shifted for policing reasons, sometimes at short notice. The table below refreshes automatically, but the broadcaster's own listing is always the final word on the day.
