Google has added a new feature to its search engine that displays upcoming fixtures and recent results for Premier League clubs. All you have to do is type in the name of any of the 20 clubs and the information will be displayed at the top of the screen above the search engine results.
For example, typing in “Manchester United” displays the result from this past Saturday’s West Ham match as well as listing the next fixture, against Wigan Athletic this Sunday. See example below.
The feature works on Google search engines in the United Kingdom and United States. The U.S. version lists the timezone as BST instead of a U.S. timezone.
There either must be some Premier League fans at Google or the search engine knows how often people are searching for fixture details online. What’s intriguing is whether Google is actually paying the licence fees to display the fixtures. By law, publishers must pay a licence fee to the Football DataCo Limited company that in turns shares the money with the clubs in the Premier League and Football League. See an example below of how BBC Sport lets readers know that they have paid the licence fee to list Premier League fixtures:
Licence fees aside, it’s encouraging news that Google has embraced football and has provided a simple way for users to locate essential information. It appears that Google has selected the EPL first and no other football league or other sport has been tested.
