Do the day and time of a match matter? 50,064 results from Europe's top five leagues

Saturday at 3pm, Sunday night, Monday under the lights: broadcasters have spread league football across the week, and fans have views about which slot suits which team. We tested the idea. For 50,064 matches in the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 from 1998-99 to 2025-26, we asked whether the day of the week changes the result, and for the last seven seasons, whether the kick-off time does.

The day hardly matters. The home side's win rate sits between 44.5% and 46.3% on every weekday, and goals per match between 2.64 and 2.70, differences smaller than the margin of error on all but the busiest days. The time of day shows bigger gaps, with evening kick-offs favouring the home side, but they mostly track which matches are put in which slot. What has changed a lot is the calendar: in 2019-2025, 14.2% of matches were on a Thursday, Friday or Monday, up from 5.2% in 1998-2004.

The method

The weekday analysis covers every league match from 1998-99 to 2025-26 in the five leagues, 50,064 in total, with scores as played and the match date as recorded. Kick-off times are available for the seven seasons from 2019-20 to 2025-26 (12,459 matches), as listed in the results archive in UK time. We converted them to local time by adding an hour for the four continental leagues, so a Serie A game listed at 19:45 UK time is counted at 20:45.

We group kick-offs into four local slots: before 14:00, 14:00-16:59, 17:00-19:29 and 19:30 or later. Two cautions apply. The seven seasons include the pandemic years, with the empty stadiums of 2020-21, and the home side's win rate across all five leagues in 2019-2025 is 43.1%, against 45.9% over the whole period; so we compare slots with 43.1%, not 45.9%. And a weekday or a slot is not a random assignment: broadcasters choose which matches go where, which we come back to below.

When are matches played?

Every league has its own weekend. The Bundesliga plays 65% of its matches on a Saturday, Serie A 61% on a Sunday, La Liga 51% on a Sunday, the Premier League 55% on a Saturday and Ligue 1 53% on a Saturday. Saturday and Sunday together are 82.4% of all matches, and the Tuesday-to-Thursday block holds another 10.2%, mostly Wednesday midweek rounds.

The spread has moved a lot. The share of matches on a Thursday, Friday or Monday rose from 5.2% in 1998-2004 to 14.2% in 2019-2025, and the Saturday share fell from 48.2% to 38.7%, while Sunday stayed between 35.1% and 40.2%. In the last block, Friday alone carries 7.2% of matches and Monday 4.8%.

Does the day matter?

The range is narrow: 44.5% on Monday and Thursday to 46.3% on Saturday, a gap of 1.8 points. With 22,356 matches Saturday's figure is accurate to about 0.3 points, but Monday's (1,529 matches) has a margin of 1.3 and Thursday's (575) 2.1, so the lowest days cannot be told apart from the rest. Draws are 25.6% on Saturday to 26.8% on Friday, and goals per match are between 2.64 (Wednesday) and 2.70 (Saturday).

Grouped, the picture is the same. Weekend matches: 46.0% home wins, 25.9% draws, 2.69 goals. Friday and Monday matches: 45.0%, 26.7% and 2.68. Tuesday to Thursday: 45.7%, 26.2% and 2.65. Within single leagues the gaps are a few points on a few hundred matches. Serie A and Ligue 1 home sides win 43-44% of their Friday and Monday games, against 45-46% at weekends, and the Bundesliga's 519 midweek matches have a home win rate of 43.2% (46.0% at weekends), all within what chance can produce over samples that size.

And the time of day?

Here the gaps are larger. Evening kick-offs (19:30 or later) have the best home record, 44.7%, against 41.5% in the 17:00-19:29 slot, a difference of 3.2 points that is about two and a half times its margin of error. Matches before 14:00 have the most away wins (36.5%) and the fewest draws (21.7%), but only 658 of them were played. The 14:00-16:59 slot has the most goals, at 2.89 per match against 2.74 to 2.77 in the others.

Those gaps do not hold up league by league. The afternoon slot is the highest-scoring in the Premier League (2.93 goals) and La Liga (2.70) but not in Serie A (2.75, against 2.78 in the evening), the Bundesliga (3.12, against 3.34 at 17:00-19:29) or Ligue 1 (2.66, the lowest of its slots). The Bundesliga's 15:30 Saturday kick-off alone accounts for 1,300 of the 4,705 afternoon matches, and the Bundesliga scores more than the others, so part of the afternoon figure is simply the Bundesliga's.

Evening kick-offs have the highest home win rate in four of the five leagues (the exception is La Liga, where the afternoon slot is higher), but the margins are small, and a few cells rest on hundreds of matches. The Premier League's 38.4% in the 17:00-19:29 slot, for instance, is a sample of 354 matches, and that slot is mostly the 17:30 kick-off (237 of the 354), a time the broadcasters assign to selected fixtures, so who is playing matters as much as when.

The leagues put their matches in very different places. Over 60% of Bundesliga matches kick off at 15:30, while 35% of Serie A's start at 20:45 and 30% of La Liga's at 21:00. Evening kick-offs (19:30 or later) are 43.5% of La Liga matches, 40.3% of Serie A's and 40.0% of Ligue 1's, but only 17.2% of the Bundesliga's and 23.8% of the Premier League's.

How this fits with the rest of our work

Our home-wins and draws studies looked at how the home side's record has moved from season to season. This one asks whether the day or the hour explains any of it, and the answer for the day is no. For the time of day, the answer is a small yes at most, with a high chance that it reflects the matches chosen for each slot, not the slot itself.

What this doesn't mean

A slot is not a randomised experiment: broadcasters choose which matches go on a Monday night or a Saturday evening, so differences by slot reflect the clubs involved as much as the time. Kick-off times cover only seven seasons, including the empty-stadium pandemic years, which lowered the home side's win rate overall and may not have done so equally in every slot. The archive's times are as recorded, and a postponed or rescheduled match is counted at the time it was played. And we measured results, not performance: a quieter Tuesday night could still be a better or worse match than the numbers show.