Sky TV customers finally receive access to FOUR major sports channels including football after years of waiting
SPORT fans with Sky TV can finally access four major channels that have been missing for years.
The broadcaster’s internet-based TV platforms Sky Glass and Sky Stream usually have the best features before its traditional Sky Q satellite product.
But on this occasion, Sky Q has had a slight upper hand for sometime now.
Sky Glass and Sky Stream – which rely on a broadband connection to beam channels into homes instead of a satellite dish – can finally access the Premier Sports channels.
Although Sky Q customers have Premier Sports 1 and Premier Sports 2, there’s some extras for them too, as they can watch the dedicated LALIGA channel and the new Premier Sports Rugby channel going forward.
But you won’t find the channels on the usual TV guide.
Instead, it’s all available via the Premier Sports app which has just launched across all three platforms.
Premier Sports is home to a number of competitions, including:
- LALIGA
- UEFA 2024 Qualifiers & International Friendlies
- 20 Scottish Premier League games
- The Scottish Cup and Premier Sports Cup
- Coppa Italia and DFB Pokal (live games from every round)
- The Investec Champions Cup
- United Rugby Championship game for the 2024-25 season
- TOP 14 (up to 4 games per round) and Playoff coverage
- The NHL (500 games, 15 games a week)
- IIHF World Championships
- NASCAR Monster Energy series (all 38 races)
And it’s just in time for some big finals.
The ECPR Challenge Cup Final is today and on Saturday there’s the nvestec Champions Cup Final and Scottish Cup Final.
Of course, Premier Sports is a premium service so you’ll have to pay extra to watch.
You can pay £99 for a year upfront or commit to a 12 month contract at £11.99 a month.
Alternatively, you can pay a rolling monthly contract of £15.99.
It’s also important to point out that you don’t need a Sky Sports subscription to watch Premier Sports.
The Premier Sports app should appear on the apps rail of your TV or box.
Future of TV channels
Analysis by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun
A number of channels could disappear from TVs in face of competition from streaming.
The BBC announced in 2022 that CBBC and BBC Four would disappear as traditional linear channels in a few years and go digital only via iPlayer.
However, the pair may have had a bit of a reprieve for now, after the BBC’s head of children’s programmes, Patricia Hildago, recently said “it’s really important… that if children still need us on a linear network, we’re going to be there for them”.
When Channel 4 announced the closure of The Box and other music channels it owned in January, the broadcaster hinted that more could come.
At the time the company said it was proposing to “close small linear channels that no longer deliver revenues or public value at scale, including the Box channels in 2024 and others at the right time”.
So which could the “others” be? It really depends what Channel 4 considers “small” but its other channels include More4, E4, E4 Extra, Film4 and 4Seven.
And more recently, ITV announced that its ITVBe channel will come off-air – though it’s being replaced with a new ITV Quiz channel.