Sky Sports is British Sky Broadcastings premier Round-the-clock sports news channel in England and Ireland. British Sky Broadcasting is a satellite pay TV company and along 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 an extremely 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 away from the Football League in 1992 sports betting.
Sky Sports began as The Sports Channel in March 1990 as Sky Television was lacking a privileged sports channel in the beginning. Sports programs were broadcast occasionally from this channel but rather than introducing a sports channel of their very own, Sky Television made a decision 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 rebranded 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 remained available on the SES Astra platform.
Sky Sports quickly turned out to be one of 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 via the Video Crypt system. Though Sky Sports began by broadcasting sports such as golf and rugby, it soon acquired 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 had become the most favored sports channel following the purchase of the exclusive broadcasting rights of Premier League Football in England and Ireland for a duration of 5 years.
Sky Sports also manages Sky Sports news, the 24 hour sports news channel which had been launched in 1998. The design of this news channel was revamped in the year 2007. This 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 on the screen and also the breaking news ticker were changed. A brand new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were additionally a portion of the revamping. Nevertheless the broadcasting format continued to be at a 4:3 and did not get upgraded on the Widescreen 16:9 formats click here.
Till date Sky Sports is related more with football than with every other sports. It is 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.
