Timeline of Sky Sports

This is a timeline of the history of Sky Sports.

1980s and 1990s
  • 1989
    • 5 February – Sky Television launches at 6 pm. The channel line-up consists of a sports channel but is a pan-European service called Eurosport rather than a Sky branded UK channel.
  • 1990
    • January–March – Sky shows live coverage of England's cricketing tour to the West Indies. This is the first time that full live coverage of an overseas tour has been shown in the UK. The coverage is broadcast on Sky One.
    • 25 March – BSB launches and among the channel line-up is a sports service called The Sports Channel.
    • 1 April – Sky Movies broadcasts its first special event – World Wrestling Federation's WrestleMania VI. The event is shown on this channel because it is Sky's only pay channel at this time. Sky Movies also shows Sky's premium boxing fights for the next two years until they transfer to Sky Sports after it becomes a pay channel.
    • 2 November – Sky TV and BSB merge. The new company is called BSkyB.[1] Two of BSB's five channels are closed immediately but The Sports Channel stays on air.
  • 1991
    • 20 April – Sky Sports launches, replacing the BSB Sports Channel.
    • 6–22 May – Eurosport briefly closes after the competing Screensport channel had filed a complaint to the European Commission over its corporate structure.[2] TF1 Group subsequently steps in and replaces BSkyB as Eurosport's joint owners.
    • 14-25 July – Sky Sports broadcasts full live coverage of the 1991 World Student Games, which are held in the UK. This is the only time that Sky has broadcast a multi-sport event.
    • 26 August – Sky begins its coverage of the US Open (tennis) tournament. This is the first major tennis event that Sky covers and begins a relationship with the event which lasts until 2015.
  • 1992
    • 22 February-25 March – Sky shows its first major cricket tournament when it broadcasts exclusive live coverage of the 1992 Cricket World Cup. This is the beginning of Sky's coverage of the event which continues to this day and is therefore the longest set of rights that Sky Sports holds.
    • 18 May – Sky purchases the live rights to the newly formed football Premier League for £304 million.
    • 15 August – Sky Sports launches Sports Saturday. The programme follows the same format as the BBC's Grandstand programme featuring a mix of sporting action, concluding with the day's football results.
    • 16 August – To mark the start of Sky Sports's coverage of the Premier League, the channel launches an afternoon-long football programme called Super Sunday.
    • 17 August – Monday Night Football makes its debut on Sky Sports as part of Sky's deal to show Premier League matches on Monday evenings. This is the first time that domestic football has been shown in the UK on Monday evenings.
    • 1 September – Sky Sports becomes a subscription channel.
    • Sky signs a deal with the newly formed World Darts Council, since renamed the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), to broadcast three of its tournaments.
  • 1994
    • Sky Sports broadcasts a home cricket one-day international for the first time.
    • mid 1994 – Sky Sports acquires the rights to boxing fights promoted by Barry Hearn.
    • 19 August – Sky Sports 2 launches, initially as a weekend-only service.
  • 1995
    • January – Sky Sports acquires the rights to Frank Warren's Sports Network fights.[3]
    • The first edition of Saturday morning football-based comedy/talk show Soccer AM is broadcast.
    • September –
    • 22–24 September – Sky Sports becomes the exclusive broadcaster of golf's Ryder Cup and has shown the event exclusive live ever since.
    • 1 November – Sky Sports Gold launches.
  • 1996
    • Following an approach by Rupert Murdoch to British rugby league clubs to form a new Super League, the sport agrees to the proposals, which amongst other things sees the sport move from a winter to a summer season.
    • 16 March – The boxing match between Frank Bruno and Mike Tyson is the UK's first pay-per-view event.
    • 16 August –
      • Sky Sports 3 launches. The new channel showcases the Football League, which Sky now holds the rights to. Sky Sports 3 also becomes the home to Sky's coverage of the Scottish Premier League. This is the first time that the SPL has been shown across the UK. The channel broadcasts part-time, from midday until midnight.
      • Sky Sports is renamed Sky Sports 1
      • Sky Sports Gold closes.
    • 26 October – Sky's coverage of Major League Baseball ends after showing MLB for the past four years.
    • November – Sky Sports begins showing live coverage of the England national rugby union team, replacing the BBC which held the right for many decades.
  • 1998
    • February – Sky Sports broadcasts matches from the Six Nations championships for the first time as part of its contract to show England's rugby union games. It does so until 2001.
    • 15 August – On the first day of the 1998–99 football season, the first edition of Soccer Saturday is broadcast. The afternoon-long football scores and results service replaces Sports Saturday.
    • 1 October – Sky Digital launches and this is marked by the launch of the UK's first rolling sports news channel Sky Sports News.
    • 15 November – Rival digital television service OnDigital launches. Sky had originally been a partner in the venture but was forced to pull out by the Independent Television Commission. However, some Sky channels, including two Sky Sports channels (Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 3 – Sky Sports 2 is added later – do appear on the service.
  • 1999
    • April – Sky Sports launches its interactive service Sky Sports Active.
    • Sky Sports broadcasts a home cricket Test Match live for the first time as part of a joint deal with Channel 4. This arrangement continues until 2005.
    • 22 August – Sky Sports Xtra launches, initially primarily as an interactive service.[5]
    • Sunday Supplement launches, providing a Sunday morning discussion of the previous day's football.

2000s
  • 2001
    • Sky's exclusive live coverage of the England football team ends following the rights transferring to the BBC. Sky had held the rights since the days of BSB's Sports Channel.
    • May – Sky loses the rights to the British Basketball League to ITV.
    • 1 July – The Sky Sports.com TV brand is scrapped and the channel reverts to its original name of Sky Sports News.
    • 18 August – PremPlus launches. The channel's is the home to Sky's venture into pay-per-view football.
  • 2002
    • 1 March – F1 Digital+ launches. It offers enhanced multi-screen coverage of Formula One on a pay-per-view basis.
    • May – Sky Sports' coverage of the Scottish Premier League ends after four seasons.[6]
    • August – Coverage of the Football League reverts to Sky Sports after one season with ITV, which the broadcaster had intended would kick-start the ITV Sport Channel which failed due to the massive price that ITV had paid for the rights.
    • Following the collapse on ITV Digital, Sky Sports takes over as broadcaster of tennis’ ATP tour.
    • 30 October – Sky Sports News begins broadcasting on the new Freeview platform.
    • 12 December – After just one season, F1 Digital+ closes.[7]
  • 2004
    • 11 June – At the Races relaunches as a stand-alone venture. Between 2000 and 2003 the channel had been on air in conjunction with Channel 4.
    • August – Football First launches. The programme allows viewers to choose the game they want to watch.
  • 2005
    • No events.
  • 2006
    • Sky Sports becomes the exclusive broadcaster of all live cricket matches in the UK following the ECB awarding Sky exclusive coverage of all of England's home tests, one-day internationals and Twenty20 Internationals.[8]
    • 22 May – Sky launches its high definition service when Sky One HD and Sky Sports 1 HD being broadcasting.
    • July – Sky Sports 2HD launches.
    • August – The European Union objects to what it saw as a monopoly on television football rights and demands the 2007 contract be split into separate packages of 23 games. Consequently, Sky wins four of the six available packages, with the other two are taken by Setanta Sports.
    • Sky starts showing weekly ice hockey game from the Elite Ice Hockey League.
    • December – Sky's 13 years of covering golf's PGA Tour ends due to Setanta Sports winning the rights to coverage of the tour from the start of 2007.[9]
  • 2008
    • 17 March – Sky Sports 3HD launches.
    • 17 May – Sky Sports shows FA Cup football for the final time, having covered the competition since BSB's Sports Channel launched in 1990.
    • 6 September – Sky Sports picks up the rights to Frank Warren's Sports Network from ITV.

2010s
  • 2011
    • 7–10 April – Sky Sports shows coverage of golf's Masters Tournament for the first time. It shows the first two rounds exclusively live and shares coverage of rounds 3 and 4 with the BBC.[19]
  • 2012
    • 9 March – Sky Sports F1 launches following the purchase of coverage of every race of the Formula One.[20] Around half of the races are to be shown exclusively by Sky Sports. This is Sky's first full-time channel dedicated to a single sport.
    • Sky Sports broadcasts games from rugby league's Challenge Cup for the first time.
    • 7 August – Sky Sports broadcasts the FA Community Shield for the final time, having screened the event since 1990.
  • 2013
    • 30 June – Sky Sports launches its first temporary channel Sky Sports Ashes to provide full coverage of the 2013 Ashes Series. Temporary channel renames of this nature is now common practice within Sky, both for sports and movies.[21]
  • 2017
    • 18 July – Sky Sports is revamped with the numbered channels being replaced by sports-specific channels. These include two channels dedicated to football, a cricket channel and a golf channel. Other sports are moved to two new channels – Action and Arena – and a showcase channel called Sky Sports Main Event is launched which features simulcasts of the top events being show on Sky Sports that day.[33] Also, Sky Sports News drops the HQ label.
    • 10 August-1 September – Sky Sports broadcasts eight matches live from the 2017 Women's Cricket Super League. This marks Sky’s first major foray into women’s cricket.[34] Sky expands its coverage the following year, showing 12 matches from the 2018 event.[35]
    • Sky shows five matches a season from the NIFL Premiership.
  • 2018
    • 14 February – BT and Sky have agreed a £4.4bn three-year deal to show live Premiership football matches from 2019 to 2022, but the amount falls short of the £5.1bn deal struck in 2015.[36]
    • 17 March – Sky Sports becomes the exclusive broadcaster of all Formula One races, apart from the British Grand Prix.[37]
    • 12 May – Sky's coverage of the European Rugby Champions Cup ends after 15 years of coverage of the event when the rights to the tournament transfer to BT Sport. It also looses its coverage of the Pro14 competition to Premier Sports.
    • May – Sky's 20+ years of coverage of La Liga ends when the rights transfer to Eleven Sports. It also looses its rights to the Eredivise and the Chinese Super League to the new channel.[38]
    • 8 August – Sky Sports takes over from BT Sport as broadcaster of cricket's Caribbean Premier League.
    • 6 September – Apart from England's home matches, Sky Sports is the exclusive broadcaster of football's new UEFA Nations League tournament.
    • September – Sky Sports resumes covering the NBA after a decade on other networks.[39]
    • December – Sky Sports ends its coverage of tennis after more than 25 years when its rights to the ATP Tour transfer Amazon Prime.[40]

2020s
  • 2020
    • June – With the resumption of play in the 2019–20 Premier League due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the Premier League announces that it will show all remaining matches on British television, split primarily across Sky, BT, and Amazon. A large number of these matches are scheduled for free-to-air broadcasts, with Sky airing 25 on Pick.[45]
    • 1 August – Sky Sports becomes the exclusive broadcaster of live coverage of the Scottish Professional Football League.[46] In recent seasons Sky had shared the rights with BT Sport.
    • 6 August – Sky announces that Sunday Supplement will not be returning for the 2020/21 season.[47]
    • 8 September – It is announced that all of September's Premier League fixtures will be shown on TV due to fans not being into stadiums due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sky shows six of the eleven extra TV games.[48]
    • 9 October – The Premier League announces that October's games not scheduled for TV broadcast will be shown on a pay-per-view basis on either Sky Sports Box Office or BT Sport Box Office.[49]
    • 13 November – The Premier League confirms that the broadcasting of matches via pay-per-view will end and that all games in December and January will be shown by either Sky Sports and BT Sport with one game also being shown on both Amazon Prime and the BBC.[50]
    • 3 December – The British Basketball League returns to Sky Sports. The broadcaster shows 30 games per season. The deal also sees Sky broadcasting matches from the Women's British Basketball League.[51]

See also

References
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  2. "Commission Decision of 19 February 1991 relating to a proceeding pursuant to Article 85 of the EEC Treaty (IV/32.524 – Screensport/EBU members)". Eur-lex.europa.eu. Retrieved 2010-01-15.
  3. "Hatton, Calzaghe and Khan on ITV". BBC News. 1 July 2005. Retrieved 20 March 2007.
  4. Richard Taylor (8 September 1998). "How Murdoch has changed the face of British sport". The Independent. London. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
  5. Chaudhary, Vivek (12 August 1999). "Now armchair fans get to control what they watch". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  6. "FANS GET A TELLYFUL; SPL set to launch its own TV station as Sky switch off". Daily Record. 16 January 2002. Retrieved 23 March 2008.
  7. Digital F1 service scrapped
  8. BSkyB lands England Test coverage BBC Sport, 15 December 2004
  9. Setanta wins rights to PGA golf
  10. "Sky Sports, PGA Tour extend deal for U.K viewers". PGA Tour. November 23, 2009. Retrieved August 30, 2013.
  11. "Sky to expand 3D channel on October 1". Digital Spy. 28 July 2010.
  12. "Sky unveils Sky 3D launch lineup". Digital Spy. 29 September 2010.
  13. "Sky Extends High Definition Leadership with HD Channel Milestone". British Sky Broadcasting. 12 March 2010.
  14. £1.78bn: Record Premier League TV deal defies economic slump The Independent
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  17. "British Basketball League". BBL. 2016-11-04. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  18. "Sky falls in for BBL TV coverage". MVP247.com. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
  19. BBC loses exclusive Master Golf rights
  20. Plunkett, John (29 July 2011). "BBC and Sky to share F1 broadcast rights". guardian.co.uk. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 20 December 2011.
  21. "The Ashes 2013: Sky Sports dedicates channel to the Ashes". Sky Sports. 13 June 2013.
  22. "RTÉ & Sky secure GAA rights, RTÉ in worldwide deal". RTÉ. 2 April 2014. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
  23. Rumsby, Ben (10 June 2014). "Sky Sports to launch new European football channel". The Telegraph. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  24. "ITV Darts 2015". Sport on the Box.
  25. Deans, Jason (17 February 2014). "BSkyB wins UK rights to IPL Twenty20 live cricket coverage". The Guardian.
  26. Sweney, Mark (22 November 2013). "ITV wins rights to Champions League highlights" – via The Guardian.
  27. Bradley-Jones, Luke (24 April 2015). "An update on Sky 3D". Sky plc. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  28. "Sky Sports drops US Open tennis after 25 years". The Guardian. 7 July 2016. Retrieved 6 August 2016.
  29. "Sky Q major software update rolling out: Here's what your Sky Q box can do now – Pocket-lint". www.pocket-lint.com.
  30. "Sky Sports to launch new channel which will offer free Premier League matches". The Independent. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
  31. "New channel Sky Sports Mix launches today". Sky Sports. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
  32. Boost for women's sport as Sky signs biggest ever rights deal for UK netball
  33. Sweney, Mark (27 June 2017). "Sky Sports to replace numbered channels and slash prices in revamp". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 28 June 2017.
  34. "Sky Sports to broadcast live Kia Women's Super League cricket". Sky Sports. 3 August 2017. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
  35. "Sky Sports to broadcast 12 Kia Super League matches in 2018 in huge year of women's sport". Sky Sports. 16 January 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
  36. "Premier League raises less from TV rights auction". BBC News. BBC. 14 February 2018. Retrieved 14 February 2018.
  37. "BBC to end formula 1 television contract early". BBC News. British Broadcasting Company. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  38. La Liga: Eleven Sports gain TV rights from Sky in three-year deal
  39. "Sky Sports and NBA announce four-year broadcast and digital partnership". Sky Sports. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
  40. insider.co.uk (6 June 2018). "Amazon Prime Video snatches coverage of ATP Tour tennis from Sky". businessInsider. Retrieved 24 November 2018.
  41. Sky Sports Racing to replace At the Races
  42. "Sky Sports and NBA announce four-year broadcast and digital partnership". Sky Sports. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
  43. http://www.skysports.com/more-sports/other-sports/news/29877/11631366/sky-sports-to-show-bellator-mma. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  44. "BT Sport secure WWE rights from rivals Sky Sports". The Independent. 2019-06-20. Retrieved 2019-10-31.
  45. "Premier League to resume on 17th June with Man City v Arsenal". SportsPro Media. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  46. "SPFL secures ground-breaking broadcast deals | SPFL". spfl.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  47. Rosser, Jack (2020-08-06). "Sky Sports axe Sunday Supplement after more than 20 years on the air". www.standard.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-12-15.
  48. MacInnes, Paul (Sep 8, 2020). "All 28 Premier League games in September to be shown on live TV". Retrieved Sep 29, 2020 – via www.theguardian.com.
  49. Premier League's pay-per-view TV deal under fire from furious football fans
  50. Premier League confirms scrapping of controversial pay-per-view model
  51. "British Basketball League returns to Sky Sports". bbl.org.uk. 13 November 2020. Retrieved 7 December 2020.
  52. Priestley, Jenny (12 January 2021). "Sky Sports drives off with Extreme E deal". TVBEurope. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
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