Timeline of Viaplay Sports facts for kids

This is a timeline of Viaplay Sports and its earlier channels, Premier Sports and FreeSports. It shows how these sports channels grew and changed over time.

Premier Sports: The Beginning

• 2009
  • 25 September – A new sports channel called MSK started. It aimed to show sports events that were no longer available in Great Britain.
• 2010
  • 29 July – MSK and MSK Extra changed their names to Premier Sports and Premier Sports Extra.
  • 19 August – Premier Sports announced it would show 30 live football matches each season from the Conference National league for three years. This included all five play-off games.
  • September – Premier Sports began showing boxing. Over the next year, they made deals to broadcast many boxing events.
• 2011
  • 29 January – Premier Sports started broadcasting all 38 weeks of racing from the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
  • 12 October – Premier Sports announced it would show up to 10 live National Hockey League (NHL) games each week. These games were for the 2011–12 season.
  • 21 November – Premier Sports began showing greyhound racing five nights a week. This coverage was free to watch until February 2012.
• 2012
  • January – It was announced that Celtic TV and Rangers TV would each have a three-hour block on Premier Sports on Monday evenings.
  • March – Premier Sports began showing up to 32 games from the Rugby Football League Championship, Championship 1, and Championship Cup for the 2012 season.
  • 5 July – Premier Sports announced that NHL coverage would continue for another four years. They would show about 400 games each season. Premier Sports later extended its NHL coverage until 2021.
  • 17 August – Premier Sports bought the rights to show the French Top 14 rugby league. They usually showed two live games per round. They only showed it for one season.
• 2013
  • Premier Sports broadcast 260 hours of Indoor Bowls. This included many different bowls tournaments.
  • May – Premier Sports showed the Football Conference for the last time.
  • 13 June – Premier Sports Extra closed down.
  • 25 October – Four years after starting, Premier Sports became available on Virgin Media. This happened just before the 2013 Rugby League World Cup.
  • 26 October-30 November – Premier Sports broadcast its first big international sports event. It shared coverage of the 2013 Rugby League World Cup with the BBC. The channel also covered the 2017 event.
• 2014
  • Premier Sports brought the Belgian Pro League football matches to British screens for the first time.
  • Premier Sports also started showing Gaelic Games.
• 2015
  • 11 June – Premier Sports began covering the Copa América football tournament. They also showed the next two tournaments until 2019.
  • July – Premier Sports started showing UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League qualifying matches. These matches included British teams. Premier Sports still shows these early qualifying games today.
• 2016
  • Premier Sports began showing all 201 rugby league games from Australia's National Rugby League. They also showed related shows like the NRL Footy Show.
  • 2 August – Premier Sports became one of the channels showing the new, bigger Scottish Challenge Cup. They broadcast games alongside BBC Alba and S4C.
  • November – Premier Sports began broadcasting France's autumn international rugby games. In 2018, they also started showing Italy's autumn international games.

Premier Sports: Growing Bigger

• 2017
  • 31 August – Premier Sports launched a free-to-air sports channel called FreeSports.
  • 4 November-12 December – FreeSports broadcast cricket's 2017–18 Bangladesh Premier League.
• 2018
  • Premier Sports and FreeSports broadcast live and highlight shows of speedway leagues. These included Sweden's Elitserien and Poland's PGE Ekstraliga.
  • 12 February – FreeSports showed pool for the first time.
  • 28 April – FreeSports began showing live coverage of matches from rugby league’s National Conference League. They planned to show over 30 matches that season.
  • 30 May-3 June – Premier Sports broadcast full coverage of the 2018 BDO World Trophy in darts.
  • 21 July – FreeSports began broadcasting on Virgin Media.
  • 25 July – Premier Sports 2, a new channel, was launched.
  • 31 August – Premier Sports took over as the main broadcaster of PRO14 Rugby. This deal meant all 152 games per season were shown live. At least 21 games were also shown live for free on FreeSports.
  • November – Premier Sports announced a six-year deal with the SFA. Starting in 2019, they would show the Scottish Cup. They had rights to pick certain games from different rounds.
• 2019
  • January – Just four months after it started, Eleven Sports gave up most of its football rights. Many of these, including Serie A (Italy), the Dutch Eredivisie, and the Chinese Super League, moved to Premier Sports.

• 2020
  • 13 January – Premier Sports launched La Liga TV. This was a full-time channel showing Spain’s top football league, La Liga.
  • February – FreeSports began showing the Japanese J-league football matches.
  • 31 May – FreeSports started showing the Polish Ekstraklasa and Danish Superliga football leagues.
  • 30 June – FreeSports was removed from Freesat because of disagreements over fees.
  • 13 September – FreeSports began showing snooker. They started with coverage of the 2020 Championship League.
  • 6 October –
    • Premier Sports took over from BT Sport as the broadcaster of the Scottish League Cup.
    • Premier Sports began showing Impact Wrestling. Their weekly show Impact! also started broadcasting on FreeSports every Wednesday.
  • 27 November – FreeSports began showing matches from the 2020–21 Indian Super League season.
• 2021
  • 2 March – FreeSports showed test cricket for the first time. They started showing all test, ODI, and T20 matches involving Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.
  • 27 April – It was announced that Premier Sports would become the main sponsor of the Scottish League Cup. For the next two seasons, the competition would be known as the Premier Sports Cup. Premier Sports would also show the competition until the 2026/27 season.
  • May – Premier Sports showed Serie A football for the last time. The rights moved to BT Sport for the 2021-22 season.
  • 28 May – Premier Sports began showing coverage of French rugby union's top league, Top 14. They had shown this competition before in 2012/13.
• 2022
  • Premier Sports began broadcasting the RFL Championship rugby league. This included the regular season, play-offs, and the Million Pound Game. The deal also covered the 2023 season.
  • 28 February – Premier Sports also started showing some matches from rugby league's Challenge Cup. They showed five games from the competition.
  • 1 June – Premier Sports began broadcasting UEFA Nations League matches for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland until 2024. This deal also included other international matches.
  • June – The National Hockey League (NHL) was shown on Premier Sports for the last time. The UK TV rights moved to a streaming service called Viaplay.
  • 30 June – FreeSports was removed from the Freeview platform.
  • 3 August – Premier Sports began broadcasting on Virgin Media Ireland.

Viaplay Sports Takes Over

• 2022
  • 21 July – Viaplay Group announced that it had bought Premier Sports. They said they planned to rename the channels as the Viaplay Sports network.
  • 1 November – Premier Sports was renamed Viaplay Sports. FreeSports was renamed Viaplay Xtra.
  • 9 December – Viaplay Sports started showing the European Professional Club Rugby's second-tier competition, the EPCR Challenge Cup in rugby. This was the first major new sports right Viaplay bought after taking over Premier Sports.
• 2023
  • February – Viaplay Sports became the channel for the PDC European Tour of 13 live darts events. This deal is for the next five seasons.