Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers, the two biggest football clubs in the Scottish Premier League, agreed deals to provide UK pay-television channel Premier Sports with content from their official channels.
Premier Sports will show three hours of coverage from each channel – Celtic TV and Rangers TV – every night. The content will include a full replay of each team’s league game from the previous weekend including all home games that are not broadcast live, archive footage and pre- and post-match analysis. The three-hour blocks will each be repeated a minimum of once per week.
The channels have been available only online since 2009, following the collapse of UK pay-television operator Setanta Sports, which carried them prior to that. Premier Sports is led by Michael O’Rourke, who was also one of the founders of Setanta.
“We are delighted that Rangers TV will be back on television once again to complement the outstanding success of our online channel that was launched more than two years ago,” Ali Russell, Rangers’ chief operations officer, said. “The new Monday night programme on Premier Sports gives our fans a great opportunity to watch SPL matches during the title run-in that are not otherwise available on television and it will be a ‘must see’ in the weekly schedule.”
Richard Webb, director of operations at Premier Sports, said of the Celtic deal: “Although we have covered a number of Celtic games in Europe and pre-season games over the last two seasons, we are delighted to be able to offer up all-year-round content including games not shown on television. I believe this is good news for all involved, with clubs getting extra income streams and also a platform on our Sky 433 channel which is broadcast throughout the UK.”