The journey from The Sports Channel to Sky Sports, United Kingdom and Irelands premier sports channel.

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 it also has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra which are available like a Premium package over the basic Sky Sports. Since its inception in 1990, Sky Sports has played an extremely 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 to support and encourage the Premier League to break out 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 Spessart News. Sports programs were broadcast sometimes from this channel but instead of introducing a sports channel of their very own, Sky Television chose to put money into Eurosport. Upon the launch of Sky Television in February 1989, Eurosport was marketed among its four channels.

British Sky Broadcasting and Sky Television declared a merger in the year 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 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 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 began by airing sports such as golf and rugby, it soon obtained 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 favored sports channel following the acquisition of the exclusive broadcasting rights of Premier League Football in England and Ireland for the period of five years.

Sky Sports also manages Sky Sports news, the 24 hour sports news channel which had been launched in 1998. The look of this news channel was overhauled in the year 2007. It was just in time with the football season. Though the main structure of presentation was maintained, the color displays of the information box, the ticker at the bottom on the screen and also the breaking news ticker were changed Sport fanatick. A new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were additionally a part of the revamping. Nevertheless the broadcasting format continued to be at the 4:3 and did not get upgraded to 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 why this channel does have a tendency to experience some decrease in viewership throughout the summers when no football is played.