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

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 along with Sky Sports it also has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra which are available as a Premium package above the basic Sky Sports. Since its inception in 1990, Sky Sports has played a very prominent role in commercializing British sport. This channel has additionally been instrumental in 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 was lacking a privileged sports channel initially. Sports programs were transmitted sometimes by this channel but rather than launching a sports channel of their very own, Sky Television chose to invest in Eurosport. With 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 1990. Initially launched as British Sky Broadcasting, the Sports Channel was rebranded Sky Sports when it was finally launched in April, 1991 on the SES Astra IB Satellite television. Eurosport terminated its partnership with Sky Television upon the launch of Sky Sports but continued to be located on the SES Astra platform.

Sky Sports quickly turned out to be one of the most successful channels of the Sky system. It was from September 1992, that Sky began selling Sky Sports as a subscription channel. After Sky Movies, it was the 2nd channel in the Sky system which was encrypted via the Video Crypt system. Though Sky Sports began 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, with the formation of the Premier League, Sky Sports became 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 five 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 overhauled in the year 2007. This was just in time with the football season. Although the main structure of presentation was preserved, the color displays of the information box, the ticker towards the bottom of the screen and also the breaking news ticker were changed. A new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were additionally a portion of the revamping. However the broadcasting format remained at the 4:3 and did not get upgraded to the Widescreen 16:9 formats.

Till date Sky Sports is related more with football than with any other sports. It is perhaps due to this reason that this channel does tend to experience some decrease in viewership during the summers when no football is played.