PremPlus (originally Premiership Plus) was

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

' first and only pay-per-view channel which was dedicated to airing live and interactive football from the

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

. The main presenter on PremPlus was Marcus Buckland with former Arsenal manager

George Graham George Graham (born 30 November 1944), nicknamed "Stroller", is a Scottish former Association football, football player and manager (association football), manager. In his successful playing career, he made 455 appearances in England's Football ...

, providing punditry.

History

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

. The first match featured

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

v Newcastle United. The name Premiership Plus had run throughout the 2001–02, 2002–03 and 2003–04 seasons before being shortened to PremPlus for the beginning of the 2004–05 season. Also, from the start of 2004–05, PremPlus showed 50 live PPV matches, an increase of 10 compared to previous seasons. 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. There was a PremPlus 2 channel, but was only shown on NTL. It closed when PremPlus stopped broadcasting in 2007. In 2006, PremPlus HD launched with the other HD channels on Sky. It was replaced by Sky Sports HDX when PremPlus stopped broadcasting. PremPlus 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. After six seasons on air it closed down at the end of the 2006–07 season, when EU competition laws forced 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 PremPlus was Aston Villa v

Sheffield United Sheffield United Football Club is a professional football club in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, which compete in the . They are nicknamed "the Blades" due to Sheffield's history of cutlery production. The team have played home games at ...

. 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 competitive 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 opp ...

(

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

boxing Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermine ...

, and

MMA Mixed martial arts (MMA), sometimes referred to as cage fighting, no holds barred (NHB), and ultimate fighting, and originally referred to as Vale Tudo is a full-contact combat sport based on strike (attack), striking, grappling and ground f ...

) events. 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, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, Sky Sports and

BT Sport BT Sport is a group of pay television sports channels in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe and BT Group, they first launched on 1 August 2013. The channels are based at the former International Bro ...

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 BT Sport Box Office is a pay-per-view channel from BT Sport. The channel is available in HD on BT TV and Sky. History In April 2018, BT Sport revealed its intention to launch a pay-per-view channel to show live boxing and it launched on 15 ...

— 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