The journey from The Sports Channel to Sky Sports, United Kingdom as well as Irelands leading sports channel.

Sky Sports is British Sky Broadcastings premier 24 hour sports news channel in England and Ireland. British Sky Broadcasting is a satellite pay TV company and together with Sky Sports additionally, it has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra that exist as a Premium package over the basic Sky Sports. Since its inception in 1990, Sky Sports has played an extremely dominant role in commercializing British sport. This channel has additionally been a key player in making a paradigm shift in the organizational structure of sports broadcasting by being the first to support and encourage the Premier League to break away from the Football League in 1992.

Sky Sports began as The Sports Channel in March 1990 as Sky Television did not have an exclusive sports channel initially Spessart news. Sports programs were transmitted sometimes from this channel but instead of introducing a sports channel of their own, Sky Television made a decision to put money into Eurosport. With the launch of Sky Television in February 1989, Eurosport was marketed as one of its four channels.

British Sky Broadcasting and Sky Television announced a merger in 1990. Initially unveiled as British Sky Broadcasting, the Sports Channel was relabeled Sky Sports when it was finally launched in April, 1991 on the SES Astra IB Satellite tv. Eurosport discontinued its partnership with Sky Television upon the launch of Sky Sports but continued to be available on the SES Astra platform.

Sky Sports quickly turned out to be one of the most successful channels in the Sky system. It was from September 1992, that Sky began selling Sky Sports like a subscription channel. After Sky Movies, it was the second channel in the Sky system that was encrypted via the Video Crypt system. Though Sky Sports started out by airing sports such as golf and rugby, it soon obtained the rights to air Italian and German League Football thereby increasing its popularity base.

In 1992/93, with the formation of the Premier League, Sky Sports had become the most popular sports channel following the purchase of the exclusive broadcasting rights of Premier League Football in England and Ireland for a period of 5 years.

Sky Sports also manages Sky Sports news, the 24 hour sports news channel which was launched in 1998. The design of this news channel was overhauled during 2007. It was just in time with the football season. Though the main structure of presentation was maintained, the colour displays on the information box, the ticker towards the bottom on the screen and the breaking news ticker were changed sportfanatick. A brand new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were also a part of the revamping. Nevertheless the broadcasting format remained at a 4:3 and failed to get upgraded on the Widescreen 16:9 formats.

Till date Sky Sports is associated more with football compared to any other sports. It’s perhaps due to this reason why this channel does have a tendency to experience some decrease in viewership during the summers when no football is played.