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            <p>Fantasy Football Hub's Ian Parrin gives us an insight into TV's influence on fantasy football - and how it affects our planning.</p>
<p>In this article, fixture genius Ian guides us through how the various TV companies decide which games to show and when - and why this is important in some fantasy formats.</p>
<p>This will be of particular use to Sky, Telegraph and Dream Team managers but there is something for everyone.</p>
<p>Check out Ian's <a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/ian-parrins-sky-transfer-toolkit">planner </a>to help guide you through planning for the 2022/23 Sky Fantasy Football season.</p>
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<h2>Premier League fixtures: The first big moment of the season</h2>
<p>At 9am on Thursday, June 16, the fantasy football community had its first big moment of the 2022/23 season.</p>
<p>Not <a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/erling-haaland-fpl-prospects"><strong>Erling Haland</strong></a> signing for Manchester City, not the launch of any of the popular games, not <strong>Mohamed Salah</strong> extending his contract at Liverpool, not even <a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/introducing-oli-poole-our-new-content-editor">Oli Poole</a> becoming editor at Fantasy Football Hub.</p>
<p>No, the key event was the release of the Premier League fixtures.</p>
<p>For those who want to know more about how the fixture list itself is compiled, the Premier League give away a few titbits in this <a href="https://www.premierleague.com/news/261976">article</a>.</p>
<p>Less universally publicised is that the allocation of the actual fixtures is far from random.</p>
<p>In fact, it is actually designed so that 'top-six' clashes are each assigned to separate weeks.</p>
<p>The top six, for broadcasting purposes, is calculated using the average finishing positions from the previous three seasons.</p>
<p>For 2022/23 it is Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham and Leicester.</p>
<p>In the eight weeks of a season that do not include a top-six head-to-head game, there is always a fixture between one of these six and a club from seventh or eighth position.</p>
<h2>How the fixtures affect fantasy managers in all formats</h2>
<p>Fantasy football managers were keen to assess which clubs had the best first five fixtures.</p>
<p>They also may have wanted to know which team was the last to play any of the previous year's top six or which of the European teams had tricky matches around Champions League or Europa League games.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/blank-gameweek-in-fantasy-premier-league">Blank gameweeks</a> were spotted - just the three for now. That's before we get any postponements for weather, Covid, alien invasion or anything else. These are as a result of:</p>
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<li>The EFL Cup final on Sunday, February 26 (FPL Gameweek 25).</li>
<li>The FA Cup quarter-finals scheduled for the weekend of March 17-19 (FPL Gameweek 28).</li>
<li>The FA Cup semi-finals set for Saturday, April 22 and Sunday, April 23 (FPL Gameweek 32.)</li>
</ul>
<p>There are likely to be one to two postponed fixtures from FPL Gameweek 25, five to six from FPL Gameweek 28 and three to four from FPL Gameweek 32.</p>
<p>Coincidentally there are three midweeks currently free of any fixtures, into which the postponed matches can be slotted in. These are Tuesday, April 4 to Thursday, April 6, Tuesday, May 2 to Thursday, May 4 and Tuesday, May 23 to Thursday, May 25.</p>
<p>So the good news for managers of games that are based upon gameweeks in which you can do nothing with your team after the weekly deadline, such as FPL, Fanteam and Fantrax, is that you probably have nothing to worry about fixture-wise for another six months.</p>
<p>However, for players of Sky, Telegraph and Dream Team among others, we're only just getting started.</p>
<div id="attachment_28110" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28110" class="wp-image-28110 size-full" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Alexander-Arnold-scaled.jpg" alt="fpl captain for gameweek 5" width="2560" height="1632" /></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-28110" class="wp-caption-text">Liverpool were last season's EFL Cup winners. Picture by Getty Images</p>
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TV’s influence on fantasy football: Why fantasy managers must pay attention to fixture scheduling | Ian Parrin

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