Match Of The Day returned to BBC One on Saturday 12 August, heralding a new season that begins with a milestone for the Premier League and culminates in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
- The UK’s most watched football show, Match Of The Day, returns Saturday 12 August
- Seven weekly football shows on BBC TV throughout the season reaching more than 36m people – and 60 percent of all Premier League viewers only watched on BBC
- Every show available on BBC iPlayer - more than 50m iPlayer requests last season
- BBC celebrates Premier League 25th birthday with re-run of first match and first Premier League era Match of the Day from 1992
- A wealth of extra digital content to mark the milestone, including the ultimate BBC Premier League Team Selector
- Radio 5 live brings 144 live Premier League match commentaries - more than any other broadcaster
This season sees the Premier League celebrating its 25th birthday and BBC Sport will be celebrating with a raft of special content. On Tuesday 15 August - exactly 25 years to the day since the first Premier League game - football fans can tune into the very first Match Of The Day of the Premier League era, hosted by Des Lynam alongside Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen, on BBC Red Button and the BBC Sport website and app (10pm).
Gary Lineker returns to host the most-watched football show in the UK on Saturday night which saw more than 25m people tuning in last season, for the expert insight and analysis the show has become so famous for.
MOTD is one of seven regular football programmes on BBC TV. Other shows returning this weekend are MOTD2 (Sundays, 10.30pm on BBC One)
MOTD2 Extra (Sundays, 12.15pm on BBC Two) presented by Mark Chapman
Football Focus (Saturdays, midday on BBC One) with Dan Walker
Final Score (Saturdays, 4.30pm on BBC One) with Jason Mohammed
The Premier League Show (beginning on Wednesday 16 August, then every Thursday, 10pm on BBC Two) with Gabby Logan joined by Lineker
And for young viewers, MOTD Kickabout (Fridays, 7.35am on CBBC). All football programming will feature the new-look BBC Sport brand identity, with the addition of a new touchscreen appearing in many shows.
The BBC also welcomes back its highly experienced and knowledgeable punditry team which includes the Premier League’s record goal-scorer Alan Shearer, Ian Wright, Danny Murphy, Jermaine Jenas, Phil Neville, Ruud Gullit, and Martin Keown. They’ll be joined by the likes of Kevin Kilbane, Trevor Sinclair, Mark Lawrenson, John Hartson, Dion Dublin, Garth Crooks and Danny Mills, with the full roster of pundits having scored 711 Premier League goals and lifted 64 major trophies between them. The talented line-up of commentators for the season again includes Guy Mowbray, Steve Wilson, Jonathan Pearce, Simon Brotherton, Steve Bower and John Motson, in his 50th year of commentary for the BBC.
BBC coverage of the new FA Cup season launched last weekend when, in a broadcasting first, a preliminary match was broadcast live on the BBC Sport website and app. One match from each of the qualifying rounds will be broadcast shown live each fortnight, in the lead-up to the first round proper on Saturday 4 November. Across the season there’ll be up to 16 live FA Cup matches on BBC TV and highlights of every round ending in May when the BBC will again bring wall-to-wall coverage of the FA Cup final throughout the day - a match watched by more than 10m viewers last year.
The Women’s Football Show returns from 23/24 September, bringing the best of the action from the Women’s Super League. As the England Women’s team begin their quest to become world champions, home qualifying matches of the 2019 Women's World Cup will be televised from 19 September, with matches against Russia, Bosnia, Kazakhstan and Wales. The BBC will also show the Women’s FA Cup final live on 5 May 2018.
