Premier League matches on Sky Sports are getting two big upgrades this weekend: a new commentary that describes every move on the pitch, and live subtitles on around 210 games a season.
The commentary, Live Descriptive Audio Commentary, is a separate track for blind and partially sighted fans, much like radio commentary but alongside the TV pictures. It debuts on Saturday, October 10, when Manchester United take on Tottenham Hotspur.
The live subtitles are for deaf viewers and people with hearing loss, and they’ll be on every Premier League match shown on Sky’s main Sky Sports channels.
Sky announced both services to mark World Sight Day. Here’s how the new commentary differs from the audio description you might already know, which matches will have it, and how to switch everything on.
Not Your Usual Audio Description
Audio description isn’t new on TV. On dramas and films, a narrator uses the gaps in the dialogue to describe what’s happening on screen, like who has just walked into the room or the look two characters give each other.
That works when there are quiet moments to fill. A football match doesn’t have many, and regular TV commentary assumes you can see the pitch.
The commentators will tell you who scored, but not necessarily where the defence was standing when the ball went in.
That’s the gap Sky’s new feed is meant to fill. Instead of the “occasional explanations” of traditional audio description, as Sky puts it, the new feed describes the match continuously: player movement and positioning, body language, referee signals, substitutions, crowd reactions and the wider atmosphere in the stadium.
It’s voiced by specialist commentators who have experience working with visually impaired football supporters. Before launch, the service went through rounds of testing with representative users, accessibility specialists, Sky’s own Access Services team and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), which Sky credits with a key role in shaping it.
The idea is to keep football something you watch together. A fan with sight loss can follow the same match as everyone else, whether that’s at home with family and friends or somewhere more social.
About Half Of Sky’s Matches
The descriptive commentary won’t be on every game. After the Manchester United vs Spurs debut, it’ll be available on one match per day in each gameweek, which Sky expects to add up to around 109 Premier League matches a season.
For context, Sky has the rights to 215 live Premier League matches a season under the current rights deal, so that’s roughly half of them.
Sky hasn’t said yet how it’ll choose the match each day, or where you’ll be able to check which match has the commentary in advance. If you’re relying on it, you’ll want to know that before kick-off, not ten minutes in.
The other gap is TNT Sports. It shows 52 Premier League matches a season, including the Saturday 12:30pm kick-off, and Sky’s new services obviously don’t cover those.
The services are co-funded by Sky Media (Sky’s advertising arm) and Guinness, which sponsors Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage, in a three-season partnership running until the end of the 2028/29 season.
That’s also when the current Premier League rights deal ends, and nobody has said what happens to the services after that.
Live Subtitles On Around 210 Matches
For deaf viewers and people with hearing loss, Live Subtitles will be available on all of Sky’s front-channel Premier League matches, which Sky puts at around 210 games a season.
They’ll cover the commentary, the analysis and anything said on screen, in real time. They start the same weekend, with Sunday’s Liverpool vs Manchester City match among the first.
It’s a welcome move from a company whose subtitle record hasn’t always been great. NOW TV (now simply NOW), Sky’s streaming service, launched without subtitles and only added them in 2017.
Sky customers paying extra for 4K also spent years waiting for subtitles on UHD shows and films, with promised dates in 2022 and 2023 coming and going. It made my annual TV blunders list more than once before Sky finally sorted it, starting with a handful of titles in 2024.
How To Switch Them On, And Where
Both services are built into Sky’s existing menus, and Sky says they take just a few steps to switch on.
To turn on Live Descriptive Audio Commentary, you can:
- Ask for it using Sky’s voice control
- Go to Settings > Accessibility
- Pick it from the on-screen options menu during the match
For Live Subtitles, use the on-screen options menu or go to Settings > Accessibility.
The services will work on Sky+, Sky Q, Sky Glass and Sky Stream, as well as on the NOW streaming service and for anyone watching Sky Sports through Virgin Media.
That’s a broader rollout than Sky’s Premier League features in August, when Multiview, the Sports Hub and the lower-delay Real Time channels went to Sky’s own boxes first, and NOW subscribers were left waiting or missed out entirely.
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