1978!
Watching the Reds on TV from Sweden was easy! We were best back then! Hence we were very often one of the teams covered by TV!
Here's a nice article describing why so many people from the Northern countries in Europe (mainly Sweden, Norway and Denmark) have taken on the English football to such a high degree!
Tipsextra was the name of the football broadcasts on Saturdays that SVT (Swedish TV) sent to Sweden from the UK from 29 November 1969 to 18 March 1995. Almost all the games were from England's top division. The season 1986/1987 there were attempts to send from West German Bundesliga. In such a broadcast there was conducted a poll among viewers what they preferred: German or English football, which resulted in a clear preponderance of the latter.
In 1967 the Swedish reporter Lars-Gunnar Björklund, head of sport at Swedish Radio / TV in Gothenburg, went to England to do a program on fox hunting. Already after one day he was forced to cancel the filming, when all fox hunting in the UK was canceled due to foot and mouth disease outbreak.
He then went and watched the football game in London between Tottenham Hotspur FC and Chelsea FC. Björklund realized that English football matches could be shown on Swedish television because it was not cultivated to play football on Saturdays in Sweden at this time. In Sweden they played their matches on Sunday, while Saturday was the most common day of play in England. Tipsextra didn’t compete with the Swedish first division football league since Tipsextra only aired from mid-November to late March. Because conditions were similar in Denmark and Norway, Lars-Gunnar issued up with his Scandinavian colleagues. Swedish Radio-Television succeeded, together with DR and NRK, to buy the broadcasting rights for the price of $ 1,500 per game from ITV. Swedish Radio / TV's share was $ 850 per game. Normally the Tipsextra season ended with the League Cup Final from Wembley Stadium.
The first match in Tipsextra was won by Wolverhampton Wanderers FC as they beat Sunderland AFC with 1-0.
Tipsextra was broadcasted from November to March, when there was no football season in Sweden. Some Swedish clubs were opponents of televised football to Sweden from other countries during the winter on the grounds that it would take the audience from football in Sweden in the spring. During Björklunds time at Tipsextra he got the program to become very popular and drew 33-35 percent of Swedish viewers! The program dramatically increased interest in English football in Sweden.
In England you could not see the league football on television until 16 December 1983, when the "Match of the Day" first was aired, as it was previously feared that the audience would stay at home if the matches were broadcasted.
In 1995 SVT thanked no to continue to show Tipsextra, and from the 1995/1996 season the new Swedish TV station TV 4 took over the broadcasts now called Tips Saturday.
In its time the program drew a spectacular attention every winter Saturday in Sweden which had been very difficult to get today when there are lots of TV channels showing several games a week from different countries all year around. The program worked in Sweden often used as a symbol for football broadcasts on TV.
The Program title resurrected for a brief period, 29 January to 21 May 2005, when football again sent to Sweden on Saturday under the title Tips Extra on Channel 5, but then from the German Bundesliga.
November 28, 2009 at the 40:th anniversary of the Swedish television, an old Tipsextra programme was shown - the match was Manchester United FC - West Bromwich Albion FC from the season 1978/1979. The match took place December 30, 1978 and West Bromwich Albion FC won 5-3. After that they showed the live game Manchester City FC - Hull City FC from Premier League.
