Match of the Day 1964- : List of All Seasons

Match of the Day returns to the BBC for the new season, as part of a new football package on the BBC.

In August 2003, it is announced that the BBC has won back the right to show Premiership highlights from 2004, for three years.

With Saturday night highlights now being shown on ITV's The Premiership, Match of the Day reverted to covering live FA Cup and England matches as well as some UEFA Cup games.

ITV won back the Premier League highlights as part of a three year deal. They also obtained Nationwide League rights whilst the BBC regained the FA Cup and England games. It was a major blow to the BBC, but Match of the Day continued to show live FA Cup and European games.

Before the season began, on 2 August, Des Lynam resigned from the BBC and moved to ITV to become their main football presenter. Gary Lineker took over as the main presenter for the show.

Des Lynam presented 36 of the 45 League and Cup programmes plus eight more UEFA Cup shows. Gary Lineker also fronted five editions with Ray Stubbs hosting the remaining four.

A new four year deal secured Premier League highlights on the BBC. Mark Lawrenson joined Trevor Brooking and Alan Hansen as a regular pundit during the second half of the season.

When Alex Ferguson's side were discussed on Match of the Day on the opening day of the season Des remarked that "United were scarcely recognizable from the team we've known over the past couple of seasons, what's going on do you feel?" Alan Hansen famously replied: "You can't win anything with kids... he's got to buy players, it's as simple as that."

Match of the Day celebrated its 30th anniversary.

With the new season came a new Premier League, a new contract and a new show, fronted by Des Lynam. Des was joined by new regular pundits, Alan Hansen and Trevor Brooking, and the show reverted to the classic format of extended highlights from three main games. Now, however, as well as all the extra analysis, viewers were also able to see the goals from all the other matches as well.

After several years of speculation it was announced in February that a new, breakaway FA Premier League was going to be formed. ITV were expected to win the TV rights but the BBC and BSkyB combined to place a counter bid and had strong influence within the new organisation. In May 1992 the rights were decided and each club had one vote. BSkyB were awarded live matches on Sundays and Mondays and the BBC gained the Saturday night highlights as part of a five year deal. The two companies also

In the third season of the new contract there were 20 editions of Match of the Day but they were still restricted to covering FA Cup matches.

Des Lynam continued to present the show, joined by Jimmy Hill and Terry Venables as regular pundits.

Match of the Day celebrated its 25th anniversary and had to cope with the fact that, for the first time since its inception in 1964, it couldn't broadcast any League football. Instead, the team settled into the four year contract with the intention of breathing new life into the FA Cup. With the new contract came a totally revamped show.

The focus was still on the big clubs and the shows were very irregular. They followed the same format as the previous year with a mixture of live League games on Sunday afternoons and highlights shows for the FA Cup. This was also Jimmy Hill's final season as presenter after a record 15 years in charge of the show.

With highlights out of fashion there were only 14 editions of Match of the Day all season and the only League action came in the seven live games on Sunday afternoons.

In 1985 the television rights came up for renegotiation and BBC and ITV offered £16m for four years. This was in return for 19 live games plus weekend highlights. The Football League met on Valentine's Day and rejected it. Football was, however, in a weak negotiating position as the game was rife with hooliganism and the two sides became deadlocked. The result was a total black-out for the first part of the season which annoyed fans and concerned the sponsors. The Football League finally backed

The show celebrated its 20th anniversary and matches were still being broadcast on Fridays. Most other sports were now seen live on television so the production team wanted to continue the football experiment as well. Jonathan Martin, the Head of Sport at the time, recalled that the experiment was disappointing: "We only got six or seven million viewers on a Friday night which was poor for the slot so we moved to Sundays in the following year." This was to be the last time that Match of the Day

Match of the Day was back on Saturday nights as a highlights show but was supplemented by live matches on Friday evenings. The BBC and ITV had been allocated seven games each with the commercial channel choosing to broadcast theirs on Sunday afternoons. This was a radical change in strategy by all involved as prior to this new two year contract the only regular live domestic football had been the FA Cup Final, England against Scotland and the European Cup Final. Match of the Day was cancelled

The programme returned to Saturday nights. Only two games were allowed to be shown per show.