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 it also has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra which are available as a Premium package above the basic Sky Sports. Since its inception in 1990, Sky Sports has played a very prominent role in commercializing British sport. This channel has also been instrumental in making a paradigm shift in the organizational structure of sports broadcasting by being the first ones to support and encourage the Premier League to break out from the Football League in 1992.
Sky Sports began as The Sports Channel in March 1990 as Sky Television was lacking a privileged sports channel initially SpessartNews.Com. Sports programs were broadcast occasionally from this channel but rather than introducing a sports channel of their own, Sky Television chose to put money into Eurosport. With the launch of Sky Television in February 1989, Eurosport was marketed among its 4 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 terminated its partnership with Sky Television upon the launch of Sky Sports but continued to be located on the SES Astra platform.
Sky Sports soon turned out to be just about the most successful channels of the Sky system. It was from September 1992, that Sky began selling Sky Sports as a subscription channel. After Sky Movies, this was the 2nd channel in the Sky system that was encrypted through the Video Crypt system. Though Sky Sports started out by airing sports including golf and rugby, it soon acquired the rights to air Italian and German League Football thereby improving its popularity base.
In 1992/93, together with the formation of the Premier League, Sky Sports became the most favored sports channel following a acquisition of the exclusive broadcasting rights of Premier League Football in England and Ireland for a duration of five years.
Sky Sports also manages Sky Sports news, the Round-the-clock sports news channel which had been launched in 1998. The design of this news channel was overhauled in the year 2007. It was just in time with the football season. Although the main structure of presentation was preserved, the color displays on the information box, the ticker at the bottom of the screen and the breaking news ticker were changed Sportfanatick.Com. A new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were also a portion of the revamping. However the broadcasting format remained at a 4:3 and did not get upgraded to the Widescreen 16:9 formats.
Till date Sky Sports is associated more with football compared to every other sports. It is perhaps due to this reason why this channel does tend to experience some loss in viewership during the summers when no football is played.
