The channel will be available 24 hours per day with all 380 matches broadcast, 180 of them live, annually. The deal runs for three years. The channel's live commentary will be available in both English and Portuguese.
The premiership has traditionally enjoyed outstanding viewership ratings on SuperSport and this commercial arrangement is expected to amplify the league's extraordinary popularity. It is already the most viewed sporting league on earth and is seen in over 200 countries.
"This is massive and South Africa will be one of the very first countries to receive the 24-hour channel," said Imtiaz Patel, CE of SuperSport. "High Definition is the way to go for sports viewing and we are delighted to be leading the way with our partners in England."
Apart from the eight live matches per week, there will be four weekly magazine shows, 400 classic matches, plus a review of the past decade and the best goals from the past 10 seasons.
Reacting to the arrangement, English football legend John Barnes described it as "very significant. The league is the biggest in the world. All eyes are on England and while they didn't go well in the World Cup, the English Premiership goes from strength to strength. It's a fantastic league with fantastic players and personalities. It's a superb SuperSport coup."
Major matches will enjoy a 45-minute build-up from the UK with top studio guests. Plus there will be match interviews and reactions, a Saturday review and match of the week. In addition, there will be a Fan Zone to field international calls, daily news shows and a news ticker on non-live matches - making the new HD channel the ultimate stop for fans of the Premiership. Programming will continue in the 12-week off-season.
According to the latest Nielsen Report, record numbers visited "Africa's leading sports portal", with over 1.9 million unique visitors visiting the site in June, while 950 000 users accessed the SuperSport.com Mobi site, arguably making it comfortably the biggest sports site in South Africa for that month and SA's No. 1 mobile site. These figures indicate that the 2010 FIFA World Cup was the most gripping sporting event in our country's history.
"While I am thrilled with the record website stats, it's the mobi growth that really excites me for the future. We had great growth in Africa, where they clearly use their mobile handsets to find the latest online sports action, especially in Nigeria and Kenya which are both showing great traction. We have more than doubled our mobile-user base this year and we certainly intend to work a lot harder in maintaining this growth on this fast growing platform," enthused Ray Moore, GM of SuperSport.com.
