It seems to come around sooner every year… The Premier League season kicks off on Saturday and it’s as bloated, overpaid and dominating in British sport as ever. But millions upon millions of people in the UK and around the world love watching and reading about it, so here’s what some online publishers and clubs themselves have devised for the new season…
— BBC’s league highlights: Some more details on the Beeb’s deal, signed back in 2007, to broadcast Football League matches on TV and online: highlights from every game will go online from midnight on the day after the game play, so 3pm Saturday games wil be online Monday morning. The clips are made in partnership with BT (NYSE: BT) and production company IMG. The Football League Show, a TV roundup on Saturday nights, will be on the iPlayer by Sunday morning. More from the BBC Editors’ blog.
— Sky Sports iPhone app: Sky is limbering up for the new season with an iPhone app: the free Sky Sports Football Centre app has live scores, news, fixtures and lets users choose which games to follow as the season progresses.
— Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) Regionals: A whole host of things: match reporters will be running live online chats during games for flagship TM sites such as Walesonline.co.uk and will host weekly Q&A webchats with fans on burning local issues. Trinity’s Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham and Cardiff titles will all be doing regular video reports and the Liverpool Echo’s footy podcast is out every Thursday on iTunes. The company plans to link to the best local fansites and blogs as well as rival papers’ too.
— Chelsea in China: Chelsea is the latest club to build its online brand in Asia with a Mandarin-language version of its website. The site has an online community for Chinese fans, in partnership with Chinese social network ikanqiu (meaning “I love football”), and the site is promoted through Chinese portal Sohu.com (NSDQ: SOHU). It follows Manchester United’s Chinese, Korean and Japanese sites and Manchester City’s re-launched Arabic and English site, which will add several more languages later this year. From Sportbusiness.com.
— Nuts.co.uk: IPC Media’s lads’ mag Nuts has launched an online pay-play-play football score prediction game to cash in on the start of the new Premier League season on Saturday. Entering Nuts.co.uk/cashfootball costs £1 and “up to” £1 million will be given away in prize money each week. The game is provided by online sports gaming business Soccer Millionaire and is essentially a branded a version of that company’s own prediction game.
— North End online radio: Championship club Preston North End is giving fans live match commentary of every game throughout the season in a partnership with local FM station Central Radio. The club’s re-launched PNE Player — subscription from £3.99 a month — boasts “near DAB quality” sound for UK and overseas listeners. Via How-do.

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