On July 24, Gazprom-Media Holding, together with the Russian Premier League (RPL), held a presentation in Moscow on the new 2018/19 football season, during which they announced the launch of a new premium TV channel about Russian football, MATCH PREMIER.
More than 150 sports and business journalists, football functionaries and representatives of the television industry gathered to learn about the premium football channel MATCH PREMIER and the details of the new stage of collaboration between Gazprom-Media and the Russian Premier League.
The updated RPL brand was presented by the League’s president Sergey Pryadkin, its commercial director Pavel Suvorov and marketing director Evgeny Savin. Dmitry Chernyshenko, CEO of Gazprom-Media Holding, talked about the successes of Match TV’s sports platforms as well as the results of the 2018 World Cup, and also introduced the creative producer of the TV channel MATCH PREMIER.
Match TV commentator Nobel Arustamyan hosted the presentation. He invited the president of the Russian Premier League Sergey Pryadkin to the stage, and the latter proceeded to talk about how important it is to preserve the legacy and atmosphere of the 2018 World Cup.
RPL representatives Pavel Suvorov and Evgeny Savin talked about the rebranding of the Russian Premier League and the growing interest among Russians to football and football competitions. Moreover, they explained how the new RPL brand will unite the interests of the clubs, fans, television viewers, sponsors and the media.
Gazprom-Media Holding CEO Dmitry Chernyshenko shared the results of the 2018 World Cup broadcasts in the digital sphere and on air of Match TV channel.
“The TV channel’s content and match broadcasts got more than 184 million views online. The number of unique users of Match TV digital platforms during the World Cup doubled and reached a record number of 28.1 million people - this is the potential with which we are entering a new stage of collaboration with the Russian Premier League,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko. “We have very ambitious plans - we want to almost triple the number of subscribers to our paid services by 2020.”
Gavriil Gordeev, the creative producer of the new channel MATCH PREMIER, announced that the premium channel will start broadcasting on July 28 in the space where viewers previously tuned in to the channel Nash Futbol. The subscription cost will remain the same, amounting to 219 rubles per month.
MATCH PREMIER is a channel for a broad TV audience. Its viewers will see all 240 matches of the Russian Premier League in the 2018/19 season live. The federal channel Match TV will show 60 of these matches live.
The viewers of MATCH PREMIER will get access not only to all RPL matches, but also to the Russian Cup games and friendly bouts between RPL clubs, said Gavriil Gordeev. They will also be kept up to date about the most important news in the top European championships. The channel will regularly show reviews of all stages of England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1. The premiere releases of Match TV’s football programs will be shown on the new channel. Gavriil Gordeev stressed that the channel will offer its broadcasts without commercial breaks.
As a wrap up to the event, Dmitry Chernyshenko spoke about the prospects of collaboration between the new channel and the Russian Premier League.
“We are long-standing partners with the Russian Premier League, and our collaboration is developing dynamically and effectively. The television audience for Russian football is growing, in part because of the growth in the number of subscriptions. Together with RPL we conducted a series of experiments, which showed that the audience’s interest to paid broadcasts is growing and this content is increasingly in demand among fans. Football, without a doubt, is a premium product and the expertise that Gazprom-Media has accumulated will be aimed at delivering this product to fans in the best possible way,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko.