WSL to restore Sunday evening kick-offs as broadcast plan is revised
The Women’s Super League will reintroduce Sunday evening kick-offs this season as part of a wider overhaul of its broadcast strategy after indifferent viewing figures last season. The league will offer six different TV slots to broadcasters once it releases its fixtures for the 2026-27 campaign later on Thursday.
The change reverses a decision made ahead of the previous campaign, when Sunday evening matches were dropped and the bulk of televised fixtures were scheduled for Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes. Broadcasters will now be presented with a more varied selection of start times, a shift described by the league as a reworking of how fixtures are presented to television partners. The move comes against a backdrop of relatively muted audiences in the most recent season, which prompted the review of broadcast arrangements.
Under the revised plan, six distinct television windows will be available for programming choices across the season. That range of slots is intended to give broadcasters flexibility over which matches to select and when to schedule them for maximum reach. The league’s fixtures list for 2026-27, due to be published later on Thursday, will reflect the expanded array of kick-off options. The return of Sunday evenings is explicitly included among the choices being offered to broadcasters.
Last season’s decision to concentrate televised matches around weekend lunchtimes and Saturday fixtures is being replaced by a broader scheduling palette. Organisers concluded that the previous arrangement did not deliver the viewing figures they had hoped for, a factor that has driven the current revision. Restoring evening slots on Sundays represents one concrete alteration to the timetable that had been removed in the prior season.
The six-slot proposal will be made available to all broadcast partners negotiating coverage for the 2026-27 campaign. Broadcasters will be able to select from those windows when planning their match-day coverage, according to the league’s announcements tied to the fixture release. The intention, as stated by the league, is to provide a “significant change” from the configuration used last term, with greater variation in televised kick-off times.
Details of which matches will occupy each television window will become clear with the release of the full 2026-27 fixture list later on Thursday. The schedule publication will mark the formal implementation of the new broadcast framework and set out when Sunday evening games will appear in the calendar. Clubs, broadcasters and supporters will be able to see the precise distribution of fixtures across the six slots once the list is published.
The reinstatement of Sunday evening kick-offs forms a central element of the WSL’s response to subdued broadcast audiences during the preceding campaign. By widening the choice of TV slots to six and restoring evening fixtures that had been removed, the league has adjusted its approach in direct reaction to the viewing figures from last season. The fixture release later on Thursday will confirm how that strategy is applied across the 2026-27 campaign.