Premier League football channels: categories, favourites and search
It is Saturday afternoon, the kids are already on the sofa, and the remote is in your hand. The channel list stretches further than you want to scroll. Knowing three simple tools — categories, a favourites list and the search bar — means you stop browsing and start watching in a moment.
This guide walks through each tool in turn, explains when each one makes most sense, and shows how to combine them so the whole household can find what they want without negotiating over the remote.
Quick answers
- How do I add a channel to my favourites in IPTV Smarters Pro?
Open the channel list, highlight the channel you want, and press the info or detail button on your remote or screen. A star or heart icon should appear in the options — select it and the channel moves into your Favourites group.
- Can different people in the household have separate favourites lists?
TiviMate supports multiple playlists and, depending on the version, separate profiles, so each person can keep their own list. Other players typically offer one shared favourites group, so the household will need to agree on what goes in it.
- What is the quickest way to reach a Premier League football channel I have never watched before?
Go to Categories, open the Sports group, and filter by UK or England channels. If the list is still long, use the search bar with the channel name to narrow it down in a few key presses.
- My search is returning too many results — what should I do?
Try a more specific word from the channel name rather than a general term like 'sport'. Alternatively, use the category filter first to restrict results to a region, then search within that filtered view if your player supports it.
- Do categories change if I switch from one player to another?
The channel groups come from the playlist itself, so they remain the same regardless of which player you use. The layout and navigation differ between players, but the category names you see in IPTV Smarters Pro will be the same ones you find in TiviMate or IBO Player.
Start with categories when you know the sport but not the channel
Most IPTV players organise channels into labelled groups, and sport is almost always one of them. Inside that group you will typically find sub-categories sorted by country or competition. If you are looking for Premier League football, opening the sports category and scanning for United Kingdom or England channels is quicker than scrolling thousands of entries from the top.
IPTV Smarters Pro puts the group list at the top of the channels screen; a short press left or right moves you between them. TiviMate's category panel sits to the side of the screen and you move through it with the directional keys on your remote. IBO Player and the portal on MAG boxes both follow a similar pattern, with sport grouped separately from entertainment and news.
The practical rule: use categories as your first filter whenever you are sitting down cold, without a specific channel already in mind. You narrow 50,000+ channels to a list you can actually read in a few seconds.
Categories are also worth exploring once with the children so they understand where sports channels live. A ten-year-old who knows to press the sport group first will reach a football channel independently, which saves the household a small argument on a busy weekend.
Build a favourites list once, use it every time
Categories are for exploring. Favourites are for the channels a household returns to week after week.
Every major player lets you mark a channel as a favourite from the channel detail screen — usually a star icon or a dedicated button on the remote. Once marked, those channels collect in a Favourites group that appears at the top of the category list or in its own tab. The next time someone sits down, they open Favourites first and the five or ten channels the family actually uses are right there.
It is worth spending a few minutes setting this up properly when you first subscribe. Add the sport channels you use for Premier League football, any children's channels the family watches regularly, and perhaps one or two news channels. Keep the list short enough that it loads at a glance. A favourites row of forty channels is not much faster to scan than a full category.
If two people in the house want different favourites, some players support multiple playlists or profiles, so each person can keep their own shortlist. Check the settings menu of whichever player you use.
For sports beyond football, the same logic applies. If the family follows F1 or cricket, those channels belong in the same favourites list. You can read more about organising a sport-focused shortlist in the guide to following snooker tournament coverage in the channel guide.
Search when you know exactly what you want
Categories and favourites both assume you are browsing. Search is for the moments when you already have a channel name in mind.
In IPTV Smarters Pro, the search bar appears at the top of the channel list screen. In TiviMate, you reach it from the main menu. Type the first distinctive word of the channel name and the list filters as you type. On a MAG box using the portal, the remote's keyboard shortcut or the on-screen keyboard both reach the same field.
Search is fastest when a channel has a distinctive name. It is less useful when several channels share a word — 'sport' appears in many channel names, so searching that alone returns a long list. In that case, go back to categories and filter by country first.
One tip for families: if children are old enough to use the remote independently, show them the search route once. It is more direct than any amount of scrolling, and it teaches a habit that works across every player they might use.
Putting the three tools together
The three approaches work best as a sequence rather than alternatives.
- Open Favourites first. If the channel is there, you are done.
- If not, go to Categories, open Sports, and filter by region or competition type.
- If the category list is still long, use Search to narrow by name.
Most visits end at step one. The favourites list handles the channels a household uses more than once a week. Categories handle the occasional channel — a cup tie on a channel you do not watch regularly, or a Six Nations match on a channel outside the usual rotation. Search handles anything else.
This sequence also scales when the family grows or tastes change. Add a new channel to Favourites the first time you go looking for it, and the next visit is instant.
For the room where you watch, it is worth making sure the device running the player is positioned reliably — a stable physical setup matters as much as knowing the menus. The guide to wall mounting and cable tidying covers the practical side of that, from cable routes to bracket placement.
If you are setting up for the first time, your login details arrive by email shortly after payment — check your spam folder if nothing appears within a few minutes — and from that point the Premium UK IPTV service works across phones, tablets, smart TVs and streaming sticks as well as dedicated IPTV boxes.
