In its first month of operations, the number of subscribers of the new premium channel about football, MATCH PREMIERE, has increased by 24%. The channel began broadcasting on 27 July 2018, replacing the channel Nash Football!, which had 279,000 subscribers as of July 1. Just four days after its launch, the subscriber base of the new TV channel increased to 317,000, and by August 31 MATCH PREMIERE had 393,000 subscribers.
In total, there were 104,093 purchases of individual broadcasts of the Russian Premier League games and sign ups for the channel on the websites matchtv.ru, sportbox.ru, matchpremier.ru, as well as in the mobile app Match! Club for the period from July 28 to September 17.
MATCH PREMIERE is a premium football channel for a broad television audience. The TV channel will show all 240 matches of the Russian Premier League’s 2018/19 season live. The new channel also features premiere showings of Match TV’s football programs. Some of the expert guests of the weekly football analytical program 8:16 included head coach of Lokomotiv Moscow Yury Semin, head coach of FC Anzhi Makhachkala Magomed Adiyev, well-known football expert Gadzhi Gadzhiyev, head of the Russian Football Union’s judiciary branch Alexander Yegorov and many others. Experts such as Igor Cherevchenko, Maxim Romashchenko, Igor Chugainov, Rinat Bilyaletdinov, Igor Korneyev, Igor Semshov and Alexander Borodyuk have also visited the MATCH PREMIERE studio.
Moreover, MATCH PREMIERE and Match TV channels launched a special project for the new Russian Premier League season. In this project they collaborate in selecting the best player of the tour, the player of the month and, based on the overall results, the best player of the season. This project has a wide reach in the social networks - 7 million people saw posts about it in the period from the first to the sixth tour.
MATCH PREMIERE is actively working on its off-air projects, including those that have social significance. As part of this, the TV channel carried out a campaign in orphanages in Moscow and St. Petersburg together with the local football clubs Zenit and Spartak. The channel’s commentators Konstantin Genich and Alexander Shmurnov, as well as ex-Zenit footballer Vyacheslav Malafeev, took part in the initiative. They held a master class during a live broadcast of the Zenit-Spartak derby. The orphanages also received gifts as part of the project, which included TVs, the equipment necessary to view the channel and a subscription to the special-interest channel about Russian football, MATCH PREMIERE.
On top of that, the channel took part in the football exhibit “Myach Kruglyy, Pole Rovnoe” (Round Ball, Flat Field) at the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh). The exhibition dedicated to the history of national football opened in the summer of 2018 in honour of the home World Cup. It showcases the history of Russian and Soviet football since the formation of the first national team in the Russian Empire to present day.