Premier League Chat

This is a true story. In the summer of 2005 when I was dreaming about the concept of creating a new website, I saw a huge need. Here I was, a massive football fan, stuck in the corner of the world watching Premier League football on TV but with no one, or at least very few people, to share my passion with about the storylines and amazing goals from the league.

At the time, there were very few football blogs and social networking was such a seed of an idea with MySpace beginning to become popular. If you were a football fan at that time, most of the sites you visited were one dimensional, allowing you to read news but not providing you the ability to interact in a two way communication.

That summer I came up with an idea for a website centered around an online chat, a way of allowing football fans throughout the world to interact with each other online. With the growing popularity of the Internet plus the Premier League beginning to be more widely accessible on TV networks worldwide, I came up with an idea of EPL Chat — a website where an online chat would be the main feature.

The initial concept of the website was that — EPLChat.com (the URL still works today and redirects you to EPLTalk.com). The concept was to allow people from their own living rooms to go online anytime during the week and chat with other fans of the Premier League.

But before launching the site in November, 2005, I decided to change the name to EPLTalk.com. Reason being is that ‘chat’ had a negative connotation where some people imagined online predators. Plus, EPL Chat was too specific and the name didn’t sum up all of the other features of the site that I was planning to add. So on November 5, 2005 — Guy Fawkes Day in Britain — EPLTalk.com was born and the Chat was featured as one of the main features.

Today, the EPL Talk Chat is back and better than ever, bringing together a great community of passionate fans from as far as Japan, Australia, Ireland, India, United States and all over the world.

The EPL Talk Chat is open every Saturday and Sunday from the first kickoff until the final whistle. In the chat you can:

• discuss the match with die-hard fans,
• debate tactics,
• view a ticker to see the latest scores from the other matches, and
• if you like, switch on your webcam so fans can see and hear you cheering your team.

Hosted by Johnathan Starling, the EPL Talk Chat also provides tips on where and how you can listen to live commentary of matches as well as providing the scores from around the league and other divisions.

The next time you’re near a computer on a Premier League weekend, experience the online chat.

The EPL Talk Chat first launched in 2006 to bring fans with similar interests together to celebrate the beautiful game. If you have any difficulties getting the chat to function or have questions about the chat technology, be sure to visit the FAQ page.