The EFL (English Football League) and Sky Sports have joined forces to live stream the EFL Cup Round One draw as a Facebook Live event.

The draw will take place at 1pm on Wednesday and will be streamed on the official EFL Cup Facebook page, as well as shared to the Sky Sports Facebook page. The activity marks the first time a major football cup draw has been streamed as a Facebook Live event, and will provide an opportunity for millions of fans to see the draw unfold.

Commenting about broadcasting the draw as a Facebook Live event, Drew Barrand, Marketing Director of the EFL, said:“Facebook Live hadn’t even been launched when we did last year’s Round One draw, so this really is a great opportunity for us to do something different to ensure as many fans as possible can engage with our competitions.

“The Round One draw is not usually broadcast and traditionally just announced as a list but with our Facebook network of official EFL and club pages having a combined audience of over 15 million fans it is a natural platform for us provide content like this.”

David Gibbs Digital Director, Sky Sports & Sky News said: “As a close partner of Facebook, we’re pleased to be working with the EFL to bring the EFL Cup draw to the platform. 

“We recognise that our audience wants to consume our content on lots of different platforms so bringing this to our 9 million followers on Facebook as well on our 30 million plus users on our own digital platforms helps bring this to an even bigger audience.”

The draw will be broadcast live from Sky Sports’ studios, with the event hosted by Tom White. Former Manchester United, Queens Park Rangers and England player Ray Wilkins will be tasked with making the draw. Fans will also be able to watch the draw on skysports.com and the Sky Sports app.

Round One of the EFL Cup includes 70 of the 72 EFL clubs this season, with the draw being seeded as well as regionalised on a north/south basis.  Seedings are based on club finishing positions in the league last season.

Manchester City are the current holders of the EFL Cup, having beaten Liverpool in last season’s final in February.  The 2016/17 EFL Cup Final, the 57^th in the competition’s history, will take place at Wembley on Sunday 26^th February 2017.

DRAW: The #EFLCup Round One draw will take place tomorrow at 1pm live on Facebook >> https://t.co/yBRQxqh5ba pic.twitter.com/mymUknATFV

— EFL Cup (@EFLCup) June 21, 2016