How could EFL's next broadcast deal affect Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Bradford City, Huddersfield Town, Barnsley FC, Hull CIty, Rotherham United, Middlesbrough, Doncaster Rovers, Harrogate Town?

At present, TV companies are unable to show live matches between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday to protect gates lower down the pyramid. Some clubs, however, believe that this is an outdated concept in the modern age, and would like the ability to raise more money by selling their games on the internet, as they can do in midweek.

The league is keeping a deliberately open mind on the issue as it invites bidders for the next television deal, not due to start until the season after next.

"The League is taking a fresh and new approach to this latest rights cycle, inviting proposals that embrace innovation and offer contemporary solutions that cater for changing audience habits," it said in its "Request for Proposal" to interested parties.

As a result, all 1,891 league, League Cup, Football League Trophy and play-off matches will be made available, although the clubs could decide to continue with something closer to the current model of a fixed number of games available if they wish.

Barnsley, Bradford City, Doncaster Rovers, Harrogate Town, Huddersfield Town, Hull CIty, Middlesbrough, Rotherham United, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday all currently play in the Football League.

Sky currently have an exclusive five-year deal to show matches across the Championship, League One and Two, with 138 games per year broadcast live.In recent years, the Premier league has tried to involve non-traditional television companies such as Facebook, Netflix, Google and Apple in its broadcast deals, with some games being shown on Amazon Prime.

As a result, they hope to increase their £119m-a-year deal to something worth in excess of £200m annually.

Competition laws mean the Premier League are required to spread their rights across different companies, meaning fans need to subscribe to Sky Sports, BT Sport and Amazon to watch all their team's televised matches.

The so-called "blackout" rule has been in place since the 1960s. It was briefly dropped when games were played behind closed doors, allowing supporters to watch matches from home, but restored as soon as the crowds were.

As the blackout is largely designed for lower-division clubs, lobbying the Football Association to have it removed would probably be reasonably straight-forward.

Dropping it would allow the Premier League to show matches at that time, instantly increasing the value of their multi-billion television deal too.

The argument for this is that fans of lower-league and non-league clubs prefer that football, and gates would not be hugely affected by competition from televised Premier League games. A more valuable top-flight deal, though, would only increase the gulf in finances between it and the Football League, with no agreement in sight for the fairer distribution of cash the lower-division clubs have been lobbying for for years.

The next argument would most likely centre around whether clubs should keep the revenue they earn for live-streaming matches, or share it with their 71 colleagues. Clubs collectively raised around £242m through streaming matches on its iFollow platform during 2020-21, when all but a handful of games were played behind closed doors because of Covid-19 restrictions.

The price of passes is currently fixed at £10 and the income goes to the club that sold it. Again, there was a brief change to this rule during the pandemic to share revenue.

There is much to discuss but the league is going into discussions without an entrenched position.