League Cup

The EFL Cup (also known as the League Cup and the Carabao Cup for sponsorship reasons), is an annual competition for men’s club teams in England. Founded in 1960, it is organized by the English Football League (EFL). Any team competing in English football’s top four tiers - the Premier League, the Championship, League One, and League Two - is eligible, and the competition presently features a total of 92 teams from across these four tiers.

The EFL Cup is contested over seven rounds, with most being single-leg matches save for the semi-final which is played as a two-legged tie. The final is staged at Wembley Stadium due to the competition’s quest to seek a neutral venue for that match. Premier League teams start in the later rounds due to a series of byes which allows teams in higher leagues to begin their tournament in a latter round.

Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, and Chelsea are among the most successful sides in the EFL Cup. The winner of the EFL cup gains a spot in the UEFA Europa Conference League play-off round. However, if it is a Premier League side that has already qualified for a European football spot based on league finish, then the Europa Conference League play-off round spot will go to the next highest team in the league table.

The EFL Cup has been broadcast on various networks in the UK throughout the competition’s history. Prior to 1990, BBC carried matches on its various channels, with ITV joining in TV broadcasts in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1990, Sky Sports secured TV broadcast rights and has since carried matches both on TV and via live-streaming. Despite Sky being a key participant in EFL TV and live-streaming coverage for fans in the UK, ITV and BBC still do maintain some broadcast rights for EFL games, namely the semi-finals and final.

Meanwhile, in the USA, TV broadcasts for the EFL Cup did not start until the 1990s, when ESPN secured rights to cover the event. Indeed, ESPN has been the primary broadcaster of the EFL cup in the USA, with the network offering TV broadcasts throughout the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s - save for a few years in which there was no coverage of the FA Cup in the United States. At the start of the 2018/19 season, ESPN decided to move coverage from TV broadcasts to live-streaming via its streaming service, ESPN+ after securing a multi-year broadcast deal.