Viasat Sport (Sweden) - Viasat Fotboll

Viasat Fotboll is a channel broadcasting only football. The origins of the channel are as far away as the year 2004, when Viasat launched Northern Europe's first football channel, Viasat Sport 2. De facto, the channel still exists today, but with different programming and the name Viasat Fotboll, which has been the channel's on-the-air name since October 2008.

The channel was launched after a series of hired football experts, like Glenn Strömberg, Ola Wenström and Ola Andersson. The head of Viasat Sport channels, Per Tellander explained, that a pay channel was necessary to finance those hirings. The launch brought mixed reactions on the various forums on the Internet. Some felt that an effort was necessary, while others were annoyed at the fact, that the Champions League was moved from a free-to-air channel TV6 and existing customers had a large increase in subscription prices.

Shortly after the launch, the channel began to show a program called Avspark (literally translated to Kick-off) with Ola Wenström and Bosse Pettersson. The program showed highlights from Allsvenskan mixed with interviews of current Allsvenskan personalities in the studio. The program was on-the-air only for a year between late October 2008 and early November 2009, then the channel heads decided not to continue the program for the next season.

The channel broadcasts only in Sweden and Norway with localised versions for both countries, even though the former Viasat Sport 2 was broadcast also in Denmark and Finland, where the channel has got no replacements by 2010.