PremPlus (originally Premiership Plus) was

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British broadcasting of sports events, subscription sports channels operated by the satellite television, satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television ...

' first and only

pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program ...

channel which was dedicated to airing live and interactive football from the

Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football Lea ...

. The main presenter on PremPlus was Marcus Buckland with former

Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...

manager George Graham, providing punditry. Alan Parry, Ian Darke, Brian Marwood and Tony Cottee were the channel's regular commentators.

History

Premiership Plus was launched on 19 August 2001, showing 40 pay-per-view matches from the

. Matches could be purchased simply by telephone or, in later seasons, interactively through the TV, and a season ticket for all matches in a season was available at a substantial discount. Pre-match coverage was shown free to air, with the channel blacking out to non-paying viewers approximately five minutes prior to kick-off. The host would repeatedly exhort viewers during this time to purchase the match. The first match broadcast on the channel was Chelsea v Newcastle United, with matches usually kicking off at 2:00pm on Sundays, ahead of the live match that was being shown on Sky Sports later that afternoon. The name was used throughout the 2001–02, 2002–03 and 2003–04 seasons. For the 2004–05 season, the channel's name was shortened to PremPlus. The channel also increased its matches from the season, showing 50 live PPV matches, with its regular broadcast slots changing to Saturdays, often now broadcasting two live matches in a day, with the first kicking off at 12:45pm, and the second at 5:15pm, though some matches were still shown at 2:00pm on Sundays on occasion. 2005 saw PremPlus 2 launch on the NTL platform. It was a duplicate of the original aimed for capacity purposes. PremPlus HD launched for the 2006-07 season on the Sky HD platform. It was an HD simulcast of the main channel. After the 2006-07 football season ended, Sky decided to exit out of the PPV market and shuttered PremPlus down. PremPlus had failed to live up to Sky's expectations as few British football fans were willing to pay for individual matches on top of paying a monthly subscription for other matches and EU competition laws forcing Sky to break its monopoly on the Premier League, having broadcast 270 matches live and exclusive from the Premier League. The last ever game shown on the network was Aston Villa v Sheffield United. This marked the end, at least for the time being, of attempts to introduce pay-per-view into the British sports television market, outside of occasional

combat sports A combat sport, or fighting sport, is a contact sport that usually involves one-on-one combat. In many combat sports, a contestant wins by scoring more points than the opponent, submitting the opponent with a hold, disabling the opponent (''knocko ...

(

wrestling Wrestling is a martial art, combat sport, and form of entertainment that involves grappling with an opponent and striving to obtain a position of advantage through different throws or techniques, within a given ruleset. Wrestling involves di ...

boxing Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...

, and

MMA Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a full-contact fighting sport based on striking and grappling; incorporating techniques from various combat sports from around the world. In the early 20th century, various inter-stylistic contests took place t ...

) events. A week before the SD channel's closure, PremPlus HD was replaced with a temporary part-time network - Sky Sports HDX, which would broadcast sports content if HD1 or HD2 were already airing live content. This channel soon ceased operations after fulfilling its temporary purpose.

Sponsorship

For its first two seasons (2001-02 and 2002-03), the channel was sponsored by the pension firm Scottish Life. From the start of the 2003-04 season until the end of the 2005-06 season, the channel was sponsored by Bet365 and for its final season, 2006-07, it was sponsored by Sky Bet.

Legacy

In October 2020, with football fans unable to attend matches due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, Sky Sports and

BT Sport TNT Sports (formerly BT Sport) is a group of pay television sports channels in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe, Warner Bros. Discovery and BT Group, they first launched as B ...

were given the rights to broadcast football matches in the UK on their respective PPV channels, Sky Sports Box Office and BT Sport Box Office — additional matches that were not initially planned to be shown on TV.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Premplus Sky Sports Pay-per-view television channels in the United Kingdom Premier League on television Defunct television channels in the United Kingdom Television channels and stations established in 2001 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2007