Sky Sports is British Sky Broadcastings premier 24 hour sports news channel in England and Ireland. British Sky Broadcasting is actually a satellite pay TV company and along with Sky Sports additionally, it has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra that exist like 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 additionally been a key player 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 away from the Football League in 1992.
Sky Sports began as The Sports Channel in March 1990 as Sky Television did not have a privileged sports channel in the beginning www.spessartnews.com. Sports programs were broadcast sometimes from this channel but instead of introducing a sports channel of their very own, Sky Television made a decision to put money into 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 1990. Initially launched 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 quickly developed into just about 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 which was encrypted via the Video Crypt system. Though Sky Sports began 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, 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 the period of 5 years.
Sky Sports also manages Sky Sports news, the Round-the-clock sports news channel which was 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 on the information box, the ticker towards the bottom on the screen and the breaking news ticker were changed sportfanatick. A new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were additionally a portion of the revamping. However the broadcasting format remained at a 4:3 and did not get up-graded on the Widescreen 16:9 formats.
Till date Sky Sports is associated more with football compared to any other sports. It is perhaps due to this reason that this channel does tend to suffer from some loss in viewership during the summers when no football is played.