- For Sky Sports (New Zealand) please see SKY Network Television
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| Owner | BSkyB |
Sky Sports is a group of 8 channels - Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2, Sky Sports 3, Sky Sports Xtra, Sky Sports News, Sky Sports HD, PremPlus and At the Races - operated by British Sky Broadcasting, mainly for their Sky Digital platform. Sky Sports is the dominant sport network on pay-television in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. It has played a major role in the increased commercialisation of British sport since 1990, sometimes playing a large role in inducing organisational changes in the sports it broadcasts, most notably when it encouraged the FA Premier League to break away from the Football League in 1992.
The first channel, Sky Sports (now Sky Sports 1) was launched in 1990, as The Sports Channel, renamed Sky Sports after Sky Television's merger with British Satellite Broadcasting. Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, and Xtra are available as an additional subscription package on top of normal Sky Digital, and the channels are available as options on nearly every cable system in the UK and Ireland. Unlike the other channels, Sky Sports News is usually provided as part of the basic package. They are mainly known for the extremely extensive football coverage.
History
Sky Sports originally began the broadcasting of sports events as The Sports Channel in March 1990, as part of the British Satellite Broadcasting service on cable, becoming available on the Marcopolo satellite the following month. Sky Television did not originally launch with a sports channel of their own - though sports programmes were occasionally broadcast on Sky Channel - but instead chose to invest in Eurosport instead, which was marketed as one of Sky's four channels upon its launch on 5 February, 1989. On 2 November 1990 British Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television announced that they would be merging. At first the Sports Channel gained a "British Sky Broadcasting" suffix on its logo, however from 6 April 1991 - when the channel debuted on the SES Astra 1B satellite - it was rebranded Sky Sports. Sky and Eurosport discontinued their partnership upon the launch of Sky Sports, even though Eurosport continued to be available on the Astra platform.
The channel was sold as one of them major draws of the Sky system, and used the VideoCrypt encryption to fund its programming acquisition. It was the second Sky channel to be encrypted (following Sky Movies in 1990), although after the launch of the Sky Multi-Channels package in 1993, almost all Sky channels were encrypted.
The channel initially aired sports such as rugby and golf in 1990, before acquiring rights to German and Italian league football in 1990.
However, it wasn't until the formation of the F.A. Premier League for the 1992/1993 football season, believed to have been assisted by the promise of higher TV payments, that Sky Sports became well known. By bidding £305m, BSkyB beat the BBC and ITV to acquire the live and exclusive FA Premier League football broadcasting rights for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland for a five-year period. In doing so, they had taken live top-flight English league football from terrestrial and free-to-air television for the first time in it's history.
In 1994, the channel launched Soccer AM, a slapstick morning chat show, talking mostly about football events around the world, along with many gags in the world of soccer and the media. This show has proved highly successful, and is still airing as of today. The current presenters are Tim Lovejoy and Helen Chamberlain. It became a media phenomenon for a short period of time in the early 2000s when they lead a campaign to save a man from his non-football tolerating wife. The Save Chip! campaign was mentioned on non-Sky news channels, and even made its way into the title sequences of a number of football simulation computer games. It was also given notable fame for the word "bouncebackability" which was entered into the Collins Dictionary, and for the Easy Chant which has been used at football matches around the country and even the world.
Sky Sports, following the success of the show had launched Soccer AM's All Sports Show, in 2002. The show deals with all things sport, and is currently presented by Helen Chamberlain and Andy Goldstein.
Sky Sports 3 was launched, prior to the start of the 1996-97 Football Season, and involved many top sporting figures as well as legends to help out. The theme was It's about... including many players and managers talking about what their own sports were all about. By then Sky Sports had also acquired the rights to Scottish football, and the Coca-Cola Cup, now more notably known as the Carling Cup.
In October 1998, Sky formally launched Sky Sports News (for a period known as skysports.com TV) , a 24-hour rolling sports news channel. This was soon followed by the launch of another channel, Sky Sports Xtra, in March 1999 which was initially available exclusively on Sky Digital. By late 2003, the channel had launched on NTL and Telewest, which ended 4 years exclusively on Sky Digital.
Shortly after the launch of Sky Sports Xtra, on 22 August 1999, Sky utilised a feature of then- new Sky Digital system to allow an interactive football match to be shown. Viewers could watch the Arsenal vs Manchester United match either normally, or through Sky Digital's OpenTV implementation, which let them chose specific viewing angles, different commentary, and similar features. This concept proved popular[1] and soon Sky used the interactive service, Sky Sports Active, for many sports other than football.
Sky Sports and other channels such as Cartoon Network and Sky News in June 2001, had ceased broadcasting on analogue satellite TV, to be available only on the digital platform. Sky Sports 2 continued the service for a couple of days and moved to Sky Sports 1's transponder. The channels were replaced by an information screen advising viewers that if they wanted to continue viewing Sky Sports, they should subscribe to Sky Digital or another digital platform.
During this period, a cross-branding deal ensured that a quiz version of Championship Manager would be produced with the Sky Sports name on it. Kirsty Gallagher was host of the PlayStation 2 quiz.
In 2004, Sky signed an exclusive deal to broadcast live English cricket matches for four seasons from 2006 to 2009 for a fee of £55 million a year.[2] As with most of their previous exclusive deals; this has caused some controversy as the matches would no longer be available on terrestrial TV. Sky had also signed an exclusive deal with the BCCI to televise the tour of India, worth around £352m.
In July 2004, Sky had purchased the horse racing channel, Attheraces from Channel 4. Attheraces was insolvent, and despite being promoted as part of the Sky Sports line up, has failed to turn a profit, or even overtake Racing UK as the most-watched horse racing channel. Racing UK had eventually launched in Late 2004, as a major competitor to the channel.
Football First, an interactive football programme was launched in August 2004, prior to the launch of the new season. It mainly focuses on extended highlights of every Premiership match played on the day and gives the viewer a choice to see a match, interactively.
Sky Sports in May 2006, had won the rights to air 'near-live' coverage of the Barclays Premiership, allowing Football First to air for another 3 years.
Sky Sports have also snapped up the rights for the A1 Grand Prix, a new exclusive two-year deal with the NFL and a deal with Jamie Redknapp as a regular studio guest for Sky's range of live football, in the coming months.
As of March 2006, Sky Sports has been awarded the rights to Speedway, for the next five years.
In May 2006, Ofcom granted a new licence for Sky Sports 4, which is expected to launch later in 2006, and will be mainly based on showing live events. This is due to BSkyB having to show some live coverage of events on Sky Sports News as well as via the red button. It is also thought that the channel will play a stronger role when Prem Plus gets axed in the coming future, to pave way for Setanta Sports.
Sky Sports Channels
Sky Sports Xtra
Sky Sports Xtra is the fourth Sports Channel launched by Sky Sports. It airs repeats and live events of many Sky Sports programmes, such as La Liga or World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Wrestling. The channel launched in 1999, and is a free bonus channel to viewers in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland who subscribe to Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2.
Sky Sports Extra, launched in April 1999, undergoing the name of "Extra" rather than Sky Sports 4. This was because originally it mainly simulcast live sports, mainly Premiership football, broadcast at the same time on Sky Sports 1, 2 or 3, with the addition of interactive services. These extra services included the ability to choose which camera angle to watch, or instantly view highlights. Sky Sports Extra was originally exclusive to the Sky Digital platform, meaning you were unable to view the interactive services if you had cable or subscribed to only one Sky Sports channel.
Since then, the channel rebranded to Sky Sports Xtra has stopped simulcasting and the interactive services have moved to the main Sky Sports channels. It now shows live and recorded sports events, and is in an effect a fourth main Sky Sports channel.
Sky Sports HD
Sky Sports have recently launched a new HD Channel, prior to the launch of BSkyB's new Sky HD package. The channel launched on 13th February 2006, and currently airs live cricket with the promise of live Barclays Premiership Football as well as Guinness Premiership Rugby. Sky have also announced that this year's Ryder Cup will be televised in HD. As of June 2006, It has only been launched on Sky Digital on Channel Number 405.
The Channel was announced in August 2005, along with a similar HD-Base to Sky One and Sky Movies. The Logo has been given a 'glassy' look.
Sky Sports News
Sky Sports News (SSN) is a 24-hour sports news channel operated by Sky Sports. Sky Sports News launched on the 1st of October 1998, also the launch date of BSkyB's Digital Satellite service, and was BSkyB's first digital only channel. On April 10th 2000 SSN relaunched as Sky Sports.com TV, a move to bring it tie in to the launch of the skysports.com website. The name was soon reverted back to Sky Sports News
The channel replaced Sky Sports Centre, a news show at 6pm, devoted to the key events in the sporting world. The show had famously broke the news that Kevin Keegan would resign as Newcastle United boss, with immediate effect.
Presenters on the channel include Jim White, Alex Hammond and Georgie Thompson.
Attheraces
At the Races was founded by Channel 4, but purchased by a partnership between British Sky Broadcasting, Arena Leisure PLC and 28 (out of the 59) UK racecourses in July 2004.
The station focuses on horse racing from the UK, Ireland, North America and Germany, showing many live races and related shows. The station is "affiliated" with various betting companies, since gamblers are generally the sports main audience.
PremPlus
PremPlus or Premiership Plus is Sky Sports' first and only PPV Channel, which is dedicated to airing Live and Interactive Premiership Football from the Premier League. Prem Plus was launched on 18th August 2001, showing 40 pay-per-view matches from the English Premier League. The main presenter on PremPlus is Marcus Buckland with former Arsenal manager George Graham, providing expert punditry.
The name Premiership Plus was used throughout the 01/02, 02/03 & 03/04 seasons before being shortened to the current PremPlus for the beginning of the 2004/2005 season. Currently the channel shows 50 matches per season. Prem Plus will cease to exist as from the last match of the 2006/2007 season, due to the new Premier League television rights deal.
Sky Sports programming
Sky own exclusive UK and Ireland, or UK-only exclusivity rights to a number of sports, most notably the ones listed below. They also transmit a large range of other sports.
Sky Sports initially broadcast matches from the FA Cup and also international matches involving the England national football team, both of which it has continued to do, now sharing live coverage with the BBC.
In 1992 the Division One clubs broke off from the Football League to form the Premier League. Since then, Sky has held rights to show live games from it. The millions and then billions of pounds which Sky has brought into the game has changed English football almost beyond recognition. Sky Sports have introduced many new features into coverage of the game since 1992 including the initially-controvesial permanent on-screen clock and score, an idea copied from American sports coverage, and subsequently copied by other British sport producers. Sky currently shows at least three live matches over the weekend, alongside matches which are held during the working week.
Sky football programming has been sponsored by Ford ever since they acquired live rights to Premier League Football. Their four flagship shows are Ford Monday Night Football, Ford Super Sunday, Soccer Saturday and Football Special, most of which have remained relatively unchanged in format or presenters since starting in the early 1990s. Presenters such as Martin Tyler, Richard Keys and Andy Gray have covered the sport since the start of Sky Sports' Premier League coverage.
UEFA Cup football was shown on Sky Sports in 1998, as the channel was exclusively given the rights to the second division of European club football competition. However, the deal ended in 2001 and the rights were instead awarded to Channel 5 and BBC Two, in a joint bid. Sky Sports had later bidded for the prestige coverage of the Champions League and were given the strongest hint yet that it may go their way. [3]
In a joint deal with the BBC, Sky Sports had secured the rights to the FA Cup in June 2000 [4]. Under the new three-year deal, Sky had been given live and interactive coverage to the competition, which previously was occupied by ITV. The channel on the other hand, did not have the choice of first pick of games.
Sky Sports had also had rights to every home Live England International, until 2004 when the BBC won back the rights.
Following the collapse of ITV Digital in 2002, the Football League formed a relationship with Sky to show live coverage of its divisions and the League Cup. Matches are only broadcast from these competitions when there are no top division matches being played, or towards the end of the season when promotion and relegation battles are taking place. The contract runs until 2007 and is worth around £250m. ITV Sport have rights to show highlights from the Football League [5]
In 2003, BSkyB won joint rights to coverage of the UEFA Champions League with ITV, who had previously held exclusive rights with all matches shown on ITV1, ITV2 and ITV Digital. ITV get first choice of 2 matches on Tuesdays, with Sky taking the remaining six, and Sky get all eight matches on Wednesday. Matches that aren't shown on one of the Sky Sports channels are available through the red button interactive service. As of 2005, Sky Sports and ITV have renewed their Champions League contract which was going to expire on 2006, but now lasting until 2009.
BSkyB's relationship with the FA Premier League had caused a stir with the EU and eventually ended Sky's 13-year monopoly of the exclusive live broadcasting rights. BSkyB's current deal had allowed the company to win four of the six tiered live rights packages and the BBC with the remaining two highlights packages. The events had left the European Commission 'unhappy' and expressed that the league has a lot of 'serious questions' to answer.
Live Premiership coverage was a critical factor for the station success, since the launch in 1992. The foundations of the channel was built on the coverage and allowed a dramatic growth in the number of subscribers in homes as well as pubs.
The deal was reviewed by the Commission and came to a conclusion that they would threat to take legal action against the Premier League if it failed to agree new arrangements giving other broadcasters a piece of live TV coverage of matches. The EU had also believed that it would give a 'better choice and value' for terrestrial viewers.
Terrestrial viewers had previously opted for the BBC's Match of the Day which showed only highlights of all the Premier League games.
Following the agreement, rival bids as well as joint were launched to compete with the growing competition. NTL with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin, ITV along with Channel 4 were some of the names that launched their own bids. Irish broadcaster Setanta had announced that it would deliver a late bid, judging on the overall concept in the 'bidding wars'.
Sky Sports ended up winning the rights to '3 out of 6' of the available live packages, which were for the 2007/08 season and beyond, with another Pay TV company, Setanta Sports winning the remaining two. Despite losing two of the packages, the broadcaster will show more live matches from the 2007/08, making more use out of the matches available to it. Sky Sports' flagship football show, Super Sunday, will not be affected by the loss of packages however Sky Sports will be closing it's Pay-Per-View channel Prem Plus, following the 2006/07 season.
The power of television over sport can perhaps be best portrayed by the change of Rugby League from a winter sport to one played during the summer months under the banner of the Super League. These changes caused great controversy when they were introduced in 1996, yet they have been seen by many as positive and as having an impact even greater than the broadcaster has had with football. The sport is now seen as being in a healthy state with one or two live matches from the Super League every week often fronted by Mike Stephenson and Eddie Hemmings. Live Super League broadcasts rank amongst the top 10 most watched programmes in a week on Sky Sports regularly. So far in the current Super League XI season the number of viewers has peaked at 283,000 for Warrington Vs. St Helens. Sky has sold rights to highlights of the Super League to BBC Sport.
Sky also hold the rights to show the Rugby League Tri-Nations live, whilst highlights are shown on BBC Sport. Due to Sky's relationship with News Corporation and the fact that News Corporation own half of Australia's National Rugby League competition, Sky also have rights to show NRL live, and show around two matches per weekend during the Rugby League season.
Sky began its live coverage of what is now known as the Guinness Premiership on the 10th September 1994 with the match between Bath Rugby and Bristol Rugby and continues to do so by showing one live match, usually on a Saturday, every week.
In 1996, a deal between Sky and the Rugby Football Union led to the England national rugby union team to be exclusively shown on Sky. This deal caused great controversy at the time, in which England would not appear during certain matches of the Six Nations for six years. Currently BBC Sport show England's Six Nations matches whilst their Summer and Autumn internationals are shown on Sky Sports.
In 2003, it began its coverage of the Heineken Cup, outbidding previous rights holder BBC Sport with it's offer of £20 million for 3 years. For the first time in 2006, Sky Sports will hold exclusive rights to live Heineken Cup rugby in the UK and ROI, with RTE only able to show tape-delayed coverage and S4C able to show only highlights.
Sky Sports has also had exclusive UK rights for live coverage of the last three British and Irish Lions tours. This is partly because of Sky's links with News Corporation television channels in the southern hemisphere.
It is also due to Sky's links with News Corporation, who are the exclusive worldwide rights holders of Super 14, that Sky is able to show games from this competition live.
Sky Sports rugby coverage is presented by Simon Lazenby and Dewi Morris, with commentary for internationals and Guinness Premiership from Miles Harrison and Stuart Barnes. Sky will often take the host broadcasters commentary for Super 14 and Tri-Nations, with commentators including Hugh Bladen, Murray Mexted and Tony Johnson.
Sky was the first broadcaster to show live coverage of an overseas tour involving the England cricket team on the tour to the West Indies in 1990. It has maintained this coverage with commentators such as David Gower, David Lloyd, Ian Botham, Michael Holding, Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton. With this line-up Sky has acquired rights to more or less all of the cricket which is available, both in England and abroad. All domestic cricket is broadcast live and following the controversial agreement made in December 2004 by the England and Wales Cricket Board it now shows all international cricket. The fact that it has such a monopoly has been a source of great anger among the many cricket fans who cannot afford to subscribe. Sky Sports are the Host Broadcaster, in the West Indies, for West Indies Cricket and has the great broadcaster and journalist Tony Cozier as part of their commentary team. Sky have more recently signed an exclusive deal with the BCCI, to air the Tour of India.[6]
Sky Sports, in April had launched a major advertising campaign, to promote the new summer cricket coverage, live and exclusive[7]. It's theme was focused on the love and passion of cricket. The main emphasis of the advertisment was on England inspirational all-rounder and stand-by captain, Andrew Flintoff.
The channel had also launched a devoted interactive coverage to the sport and introduced two new characters for the more younger viewers of the sport; named Willow and Stumpy, who would explain several cricket terms that they might find hard to understand.
Following the departure of Frank Warren's Sports Network to ITV during 2005, many of the top British boxers no longer fight on Sky. However many top American fights are still broadcast as well as do the remainder of Britain's top fighters including Ricky Hatton. Some of the channels top fights are shown on the Pay-Per-View channel Sky Box Office instead of Sky Sports. Presenters and commentators for Sky Sports' coverage include Paul Dempsey, Wayne McCullough and Johnny Nelson.
In 1989, Sky Sports had acquired the rights to WWF Wrestling (now World Wrestling Entertainment or WWE), from America. Despite being sports-entertainment as opposed to a competitive sport, the show proved popular. WWE ranks among the most watched Sky Sports shows, along with football and rugby league.
As of late 2005, Sky have signed a new deal giving them the rights to show WWE Wrestling until 2010. Part of the deal states that major PPV's such as WrestleMania would be part of the Sky Box Office subscription, and that SmackDown! would move from Sky One to Sky Sports. This, however wasn't a move favoured by many British WWE fans. However as part of the deal, RAW is now shown at 2am on Sky Sports 3 every Monday night. SmackDown! is shown before it's shown in America, on Friday nights at 10pm on Sky Sports 3. Sky Sports 1 shows 6 WWE PPV's free and live a year.
References
Books
- Kelly, John (1996). Sky Sports Official Premier League Fans' Guide. Carlton Books Ltd. (ISBN 1858681782).
- Kelly, John (1997). Sky Sports Official Premier League Fans' Guide. Carlton Books Ltd. (ISBN 1858683270).
- Kelly, John (1999). Sky Sports Football Annual. Pedigree Books. (ISBN 1874507937).
- Rollin, Jack (2004). Sky Sports Football Yearbook 2005-2006. Headline Book Publishing Ltd. (ISBN 0755313852).
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Rollin, Jack (2004). Sky Sports Football Yearbook 2004-2005. Headline Book Publishing Ltd. (ISBN 0755313100).
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Rollin, Jack (2004). The Sky Sports Football Yearbook 2003-2004. Headline Book Publishing Ltd. (ISBN 0755312279).
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Notes
- ^ Sky Sports Active is the third most popular reason for people to join Sky; Independent Article, June 2001
- ^ Channel 4 Test coverage bowled out by Sky and Five Guardian Unlimited. URL accessed on December 15, 2004
- ^ Sky 'could get Champions League' BBC Sport. URL accessed on October 24 2001
- ^ BSkyB and BBC get FA Cup rights Digital Spy URL accessed on June 16, 2000
- ^ League agrees improved TV deals BBC Sport. URL accessed on June 10, 2005
- ^ Sky nets rights to England's Indian Test Guardian Unlimited. URL accessed on February 242006
- ^ Sky set for "heaviest ever" cricket marketing Media 247. URL accessed on April 132006
External links
- Official Website of Sky Sports
- Irish tailored version of the Sky Sports website
- Official Website of the Broadcasting Service, BSkyB
- Sky TV Guide
- TV Newsroom
- Sky Bet
See also
News Articles
- Football rights hat-trick for Sky
- Sky Sports Boost for Speedway
- Sky Sports snub sees three Brits get stripped of titles
- Sky Sports drafts in Flintoff for cricket coverage promotion
- EU tackles Premier League TV deals
- Sky unveils high-definition shows
- Sky host Lovejoy to join Virgin
- ITV and Sky rapped over World Cup