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 over the basic Sky Sports. Since its creation in 1990, Sky Sports has played a very dominant role in commercializing British sport. This channel has also been instrumental for 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 an exclusive sports channel in the beginning. Sports programs were transmitted sometimes from this channel but rather than introducing a sports channel of their very own, Sky Television made a decision to invest in 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 available on the SES Astra platform.
Sky Sports soon turned out to be one of the most successful channels in 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. Even though Sky Sports started out by broadcasting sports such as golf and rugby, it soon acquired the rights to air Italian and German League Football thereby increasing its popularity base.
In 1992/93, together with the formation of the Premier League, Sky Sports had become the most popular 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 operates 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. Although the main structure of presentation was preserved, the colour displays on the information box, the ticker towards 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 part 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 than with any other sports. It is perhaps because of this reason that this channel does tend to suffer from some decrease in viewership during the summers when no football is played.
