Many broadcasters have and tried and failed to challenge Sky’s dominance of sports broadcasting since the 1990s.
Last week’s closure of Eurosport in the UK and Ireland marked the latest move by owner Warner Bros Discovery to boost its sports offering, annoying fans of athletics, cycling, snooker and skiing who must now pay more to watch their favourite sports via TNT Sports.
But Eurosport isn’t the only sports channel to have been forced off UK TV screens. Take a trip down memory lane with RXTV to revisit some of the other losers in the tough sports channel business…
Screensport (March 1993)
In the early days of sports channels, there were two pan-European services: Eurosport and Screensport.
Screensport, like Eurosport, operated a single video feed with satellite viewers able to choose between multiple language feeds for commentary. The channel was known by different names in different countries; the different names flashed up during the ident. Collectively, Screensport was known as the ‘European Sports Network’. In 1992, it failed in its attempt to win the rights to the new English Premier League.
On 1st March 1993, Screensport ceased broadcasting, officially merging with Eurosport in a bid to make both channels profitable.
ITV Sport Channel (May 2002)
In the early 2000s, the ITV network was dominated by two companies: Carlton and Granada. Together, they used the ITV brand to launch not just a challenger digital TV network but also a challenger sports channel to rival Sky.
The ITV Sport Channel was home to live Football League coverage, but clubs ended up losing out when the channel folded. Incidentally, the channel remained on air for a limited time after the rest of the ITV Digital platform had closed, to ensure full coverage of the remaining fixtures. On 11th May 2002 it aired its final games and ended like this:
ITV Digital collapsed with loses of £1.25 billion.
Setanta Sports (June 2009)
Setanta became the next broadcaster to dominate Sky’s dominance in sports. It expanded rapidly, securing Premier League rights. It collapsed just as rapidly, after failing to make payments to a number of sporting organisations. At the time, the broadcaster was said to have been making a loss of £100 million a year.
Its closedown was very abrupt.
Its even shorter lived sports news channel has a more comprehensive sign-off:
Setanta continued broadcasting for a time in the Republic of Ireland. Setanta-branded channels continue to exist in parts of Central Asia.
Viaplay Xtra – formerly FreeSports (January 2024)
Ahead of selling its UK sports channel business back to Premier Sports, Sweden’s Viaplay closed down its free-to-air sports channel Viaplay Xtra. The channel had prior to Viaplay’s takeover been known as FreeSports, but had been unavailable on Freeview since the end of June 2024.
It went out quietly, telling viewers it would be “back shortly” instead of that the channel had closed…
Viaplay 1 and 2 were subsequently replaced by Premier Sports 1 and 2 in the UK.
Eurosport – UK/Ireland (February 2025)
Warner Bros Discovery announced in January 2025 it would be closing Eurosport in the UK and Ireland. Content has migrated across to TNT Sports and Discovery+.
Programmes on Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2 UK/Ireland went into a loop advertising TNT Sports and Discovery+ at 2:00am GMT on Friday 28th February 2025. That loop continued until platform operators pulled the feed. On Virgin Media, that was almost immediately after scheduled programmes ended.
Eurosport continues to broadcast in the rest of Europe.
Content from YouTube. Copyright lies with the relevant broadcasters. With thanks to the various YouTubers who preserved these moments of UK broadcasting history for all to enjoy. Usage in accordance with YouTube Terms of Service.
By: Marc Thornham