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The BBC will screen live Coca-Cola Championship matches for the first time as part of a deal that will double the Football League's income from broadcast rights. New agreements with Sky, as well as the BBC, which come into effect from the 2009-10 season and run for three years, are worth £264m, compared with £112.5m for the present contract. The deal comes five years after the collapse of ITV Digital which bought the same rights for more than £300m and left clubs in the three lower divisions who had overspent close to ruin. The BBC will show ten live matches per season, the first lower league games it has shown since March 1986 when it broadcast highlights of Bolton versus Portsmouth. A further 65 Football League games per season will be shown live on Sky, which will also screen the Football League play-offs. For the BBC, the live Championship matches and a further weekly Football League highlights programme will go some way to offsetting the absence from its schedules of live England and FA Cup matches, which were lost to a joint bid from ITV and Setanta.
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