This is a timeline of sports channels in the UK other than Sky Sports, BT Sport and Premier Sports/FreeSports. The timeline also includes sports events which were shown on non-sports non-terrestrial channels. The timeline also includes sports coverage broadcast on streaming services.
1980s 1981 Screensport is by founded Bob Kennedy. This is the first proposal for a sports channel to operate in the UK.Cable Television and the Future of Broadcasting. Edited by Ralph Negrine, 1985, .
1982 No events.
1983 No events.
1984 February – Ahead of its launch, Screensport completes a programming deal with Trans World International, giving the channel access to events taking place around the world."Screen International", 25 February 1984, Issue 434, p. 19Joint Ventures, Alliances, and Corporate Strategy Kathryn Rudie Harrigan. p. 169 . 29 March – Screensport launches. Initially all coverage is pre-recorded and the channel broadcasts for just a few hours each day. 31 August – Screensport shows its first live event - greyhound racing.
1985 17 May – Screensport covers the Football League Trophy Southern Area Final between Brentford and Newport County. This is the first time a match in an English senior football competition is shown exclusively on a satellite channel. The Northern equivalent and the Wembley final would also be shown. 17 September – Screensport covers, and sponsors, the Football League Super Cup, a competition designed to compensate clubs banned from European competition following the Heysel Stadium disaster. This is the only English club competition shown on television in the UK in the first half of the 1985/86 season.
1986 30 September – Screensport broadcasts the final of what was to be the only Football League Super Cup. 1 December – The WHSmith Television Group takes over the operation and management of Screensport after Bob Kennedy and ABC pull out."Shadow cast over cable TV". Jonathan Miller, Media Correspondent. The Times, 1 December 1986; p. 3.
1987 July – Screensport signs a deal with Thames Television, who were the Football League's agent for international distribution, to transmit 34 recorded matches via cable and satellite."Leeds game moved", The Guardian; 18 July 1987, p. 15 Thames produced its programme, called the Big League Soccer. This resulted in Screensport being the only place where viewers could get extended highlights of the league during the 1987/88 season.
1988 8 June – Rupert Murdoch announces plans to launch a four-channel service on the soon to be launched Astra satellite. One of these channels will be a sports service.The £199 dish that will launch a television revolution. by Richard Evans Media Editor. The Times, Thursday, 9 June 1988 August - Weekly highlights of First Division matches in the 1988-89 season are shown on satellite and cable via Super Channel. The channel relays the Chrysalis Television produced English Soccer programme, whilst also becoming the home of Dutch football during the campaign. 5 September – S4C launches a sports programme called Sgorio. The programme is set up to provide highlights of European football, including highlights of games from La Liga and Serie A, although other sports are also included within the programme. 7 December – ESPN increases its stake in Screensport from 3.5% to 25.5% after purchasing shares from WHSmith for £4.4 million."Stake raised". The Times, 7 December 1988; p. 27 By then, Screensport had increased its sports content, allowing the channel to broadcast for 18.5 hours each day. The schedule includes ice hockey, skiing, golf, tennis, and yachting. 3 October - Screensport gains the rights to the Spanish League, and begins weekly full match coverage.
1989 5 February – Sky Television launches at 6pm. They include a pan-European sports channel, Eurosport which Sky co-founds with the European Broadcasting Union. The channel's first night is dominated by winter sports, which Eurosport has broadcast live and in depth ever since. February – Screensport begins broadcasting on the Astra 1A satellite, thereby massively extending its reach across the UK."WH Smith in £4.4m TV bid". The Times, 17 May 1989; p. 26
1990s 1990 25 March – BSB launches and among the channel line-up is a sports channel called The Sports Channel.
1991 20 April – Following the merger between Sky TV and BSB, BSB's Sport Channel closes and is replaced the next day by Sky Sports. 6–22 May – Eurosport briefly closes after the competing Screensport channel had filed a complaint to the European Commission over its corporate structure. TF1 Group subsequently steps in and replaces BSkyB as Eurosport's joint owners.
1992 No events.
1993 1 March – Screensport closes following its merger with Eurosport in the hope that one would become financially profitable."Satellite channels to merge". The Times 14 January 1993; p. 40
1994 A deal with Chrysalis SportSporting push for UK cable-only channel Screen Digest, 1 March 1994 sees cable station Wire TV make a push into sports broadcasting and Wire launches an evening sports programming block called Sportswire. Sport shown includes Vauxhall Conference football, BDO Darts and Lennox Lewis's WBC title fights. 1995 January – Eurosport replaces Sky Sports as the broadcaster of tennis' Australian Open and has broadcast the event in full ever since. June – TCI (owners of Telewest) and NYNEX do a deal with BSkyB which includes a clause that the cable operators do not launch any rival channels to those already operated by Sky. This causes the collapse of Sportswire, days before its launch as a full-time channel. 7–28 October – L!VE TV broadcasts many of the matches from the 1995 Rugby League World Cup. It shows many of them exclusively as the main broadcaster, BBC Sport, only shows four matches live from the entire tournament although Wales' three matches are shown on S4C. L!VE TV also shows coverage of that year's World Masters darts tournament - its predecessor Wire TV had shown the event for the previous two years. However, L!VE would only show the event once as from the following year, the event moved to Eurosport where it stayed until 2000. The Racing Channel launches, thereby becoming the UK's first channel devoted to a single sport.
1996 13 October – Formula One coverage on Eurosport ends. It had shown full race weekend coverage of the event since the early days of the channel and had been the only place to see the practice and qualifying sessions as the BBC had only shown the actual race prior to the 1996 Formula One World Championship.
1997 A Welsh-language rugby union programme Clwb Rygbi launches on S4C. It is produced by BBC Sport.
1998 10 September – MUTV launches, becoming the first football club channel to start broadcasting in the UK.
1999 18 January – British Eurosport launches. The change sees the introduction of live studio presentation of major events. 1 May – Extreme Sports Channel launches. September – Champions on 28 and Champions on 99 launch to provide live and recorded coverage of the UEFA Champions League. The channels are only available to ONdigital customers.
2000s 2000 September – ONsport launches. It replaces Champions on 28 and Champions on 99, which had reflected the channel numbers these were broadcast on. These channels were re-branded respectively as ONsport 1 and ONsport 2, after ONdigital had purchased rights to the ATP Masters Series tennis. Whilst ONsport 1 broadcast 24 hours a day, ONsport 2 timeshared with Carlton Cinema and was only on air to provide coverage of an alternate Champions League match.
2001 March – Motorsports channel Motors TV launches in the UK. 11 August – ONsport closes following the launch of the ITV Sport Channel.
2002 1 March – F1 Digital+ launches. It offers enhanced multi-screen coverage of Formula One on a pay-per-view basis. 1 May – At The Races launches. 13 August – Chelsea TV launches. 5 December – NASN launches to show live and recorded coverage of North American sports. 12 December – After just one season, F1 Digital+ closes.Digital F1 service scrapped
2003 January – Eurosport takes over as broadcaster of Serie A, opting to show a match at peak-time whereas Channel 4 had shown its live coverage in the afternoon. The Racing Channel closes. It had been on air since 1995. Eurosport broadcasts snooker for the first time.Eurosport pots 10-year deal with World Snooker The channel goes on to provide extensive coverage of the sport both in the UK and across Europe.
2004 15 March – The Wrestling Channel launches. It had been on air for the previous three months as a programming block on Friendly TV. 29 March – At the Races closes down due to financial problems. 29 May – Racing UK launches. 11 June – At the Races relaunches as a stand-alone venture without Channel Four. 26 July – Celtic TV and Rangers TV launch. August – Irish sports broadcaster Setanta Sports takes over from the BBC as the UK rights holder of the Scottish Premier League.
2005 10 January – Eurosport launches a second channel, Eurosport 2. September – Bravo and Setanta Sports take over coverage of Serie A under a joint agreement from 2005 to the end of the 2006–07 season.Bravo to air Football Italia Digital Spy, 5 August 2005 7 October – UKTV announces that it will begin showing sport, and 2006 sees UKTV G2 show highlights of the RBS Six Nations rugby union championship, extensive coverage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup as a sub-licensing of the BBC's rights to the tournament, and basketball, including the quarter-finals of Euroleague Basketball and the 2006 FIBA World Championship.
2006 8 March – Racing TV launches an international racing channel Racing World. Consequently, racing TV concentrates on UK horse racing.Racing World launches 13 March – NASN buys the rights to show ten live Major League Baseball games a week. The UK's first classic sports channel ESPN Classic launches. 17–18 June – Motors TV broadcasts the Le Mans 24 Hours race in its entirety. It also shows the 2007 race. 25 August – Setanta Sports brings regular non league football to television when it acquires the rights to the Football Conference. The deal also sees the Conference Cup renamed the Setanta Cup. 4 December – The Wrestling Channel relaunches as TWC Fight! 23 December – Bravo decides to drop its coverage of Serie A due to poor viewing figures. The league does continue to be shown by Setanta Sports.
2007 11 January – Following Setanta Sports’ purchase of rights to the PGA Tour, the company launches a dedicated golf channel Setanta Golf. March – ESPN buys NASN and the purchase sees the return of ESPN's flagship magazine shows, such as Baseball Tonight, Around the Horn, The Sports Reporters and Pardon the Interruption, which had not been shown since the previous year after the contract between NASN and ESPN ended. 9 June – S4C shows the first of four Celtic Crusaders rugby league matches live. The following season, S4C shows five more Celtic Crusaders games. 11 August – Setanta Sports shows the first of its 46 matches from the Premier League.giant killer puts end to Sky's Premier League stranglehold September – Frank Warren's Sports Network promotions moves, for the most part, to Setanta Sports although fights involving Amir Khan continue to be shown on ITV. 20 September – LFC TV, a dedicated official channel for English football club Liverpool F.C., launches. 29 November – Setanta Sports News launches. The channel launches following a dispute which saw Sky Sports News and the other Sky basics channels removed from Virgin Media and this launch is seen by the cable company as a replacement sports news channel. The channel is jointly owned by both companies with ITN producing the channel's content.Setanta Sports News launch date announced Digital Spy, 5 November 2007