Sky Sports is British Sky Broadcastings premier Round-the-clock sports news channel in England and Ireland. British Sky Broadcasting is actually a satellite pay TV company and together with Sky Sports additionally, it has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra which are available like a Premium package above the basic Sky Sports. Since its creation in 1990, Sky Sports has played a very dominant role in commercializing British sport. This channel has additionally been instrumental 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 out from the Football League in 1992.
Sky Sports began as The Sports Channel in March 1990 as Sky Television was lacking an exclusive sports channel initially Spessart News. Sports programs were transmitted occasionally by this channel but instead of launching a sports channel of their very own, Sky Television made a decision to invest in Eurosport. Upon 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 the year 1990. Initially unveiled as British Sky Broadcasting, the Sports Channel was relabeled Sky Sports when it was eventually launched in April, 1991 on the SES Astra IB Satellite television. Eurosport discontinued its partnership with Sky Television upon the launch of Sky Sports but remained 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 second channel in the Sky system which was encrypted through the Video Crypt system. Even though Sky Sports began by airing sports such as golf and rugby, it soon obtained the rights to air Italian and German League Football thereby improving its popularity base.
In 1992/93, with the formation of the Premier League, Sky Sports became the most favored sports channel following the 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 24 hour sports news channel which had been launched in 1998. The look of this news channel was revamped in the year 2007. It was just in time with the football season. Though the main structure of presentation was preserved, the color displays of the information box, the ticker at the bottom of the screen and the breaking news ticker were changed www.sportfanatick.com. A new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were additionally a portion of the revamping. Nevertheless the broadcasting format remained at a 4:3 and did not get upgraded on the Widescreen 16:9 formats.
Till date Sky Sports is associated more with football compared to any other sports. It is perhaps because of this reason why this channel does have a tendency to experience some decrease in viewership throughout the summers when no football is played.
