ITV Sport Channel History

*Information taken from Wikipedia.*

The ITV Sport Channel can trace its foundations back to 1999 when the then named ONdigital service acquired exclusive rights to screen every match from the UEFA Champions League, to supplement ITV's existing coverage of the competition. Two channels to show the matches were set up, entitled **Champions on 98** and **Champions on 99**, reflecting the channel numbers these were broadcast on. Prior to the 2000-01 season, 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.

In June 2000, ONdigital successfully outbid BSkyB for the rights to show live matches from The Football League and the League Cup, for a massive £315m over three seasons, at least five times more than any broadcaster had previously bid for it. The launch of the ITV Sport Channel was announced in April 2001 and both ONsport 1 and ONsport 2 were closed down prior to its launch and the subsequent renaming of the ONdigital service to ITV Digital. The channel launched on 11 August 2001 (the same day when ITV's main channel got renamed from just ITV to ITV1) with Manchester City v Watford in the First Division.[1]

There were also two spin-off channels, **ITV Sport Plus** and **ITV Sport Select**. ITV Sport Select showed the on-demand Premier League football matches from Sky Sports and ITV Sport Plus was available on Champions League matchdays to show additional live matches from the competition.

The cost of the Football League deal proved one too many a burden for ITV Digital, and it was placed into administration on 27 March 2002, after the League refused to accept a £130m pay cut in its £315m deal with the ITV Sport Channel. Most subscription channels ceased broadcasting on ITV Digital on 1 May 2002, with the ITV Sport Channel being re-designated as a free-to-air channel. The collapse caused severe financial difficulties for lower-division football clubs who had budgeted for large incomes from the television contract.[2]

The Football League sued ITV Digital's parent companies, Carlton and Granada, claiming that the firms had breached their contract in failing to deliver the guaranteed income. The League lost the case, with the judge ruling that it had "failed to extract sufficient written guarantees". The League then filed a negligence claim against its lawyers for failing to press for a written guarantee at the time of the deal with ITV Digital. This time it was awarded a paltry £4 in damages of the £150m it was seeking.[3]

The channel closed on 12 May 2002 with the Division 2 Play Off Final between Brentford and Stoke.

## 2016 relaunch

Following a network identity refresh in March 2016, the channel relaunched following the launch of the BT Sport channels and the relaunch of the former ITV News Channel back in 2013, but this time launching on Freeview (where the channel was broadcasting on the former ITV3+1 EPG slot of ch63 at the time), Freesat, Sky, TalkTalk TV & Virgin Media, on 22nd March 2016 - along with the launch of another new channel, ITV Life. Later in April 2017, the channel became available on TopUp TV via subscriber's choice. The channel later launched on the BT TV & YouView platforms in 2018.

### ITV Sport Channel HD

On 1st January 2019, following the closure of the ITV HD pay-per-view service, an HD simulcast of the ITV Sport Channel was launched on the Sky, BT TV & Virgin Media platforms.

### ITV Sport Channel says "goodbye" to Freeview, and revived music channel Classic FM TV takes over the channel's old EPG slot

On Monday 14th June 2021 ITV Sport Channel decided to leave the Freeview platform as a result of the channel now only being available on Sky, Freesat, Virgin, BT TV & YouView. On Saturday 19th June, the channel's original EPG slot of channel 63 was taken over by Classic FM TV (which returned on 16th August 2016 as part of Global Group's lineup of television channels after the original version of the channel ceased broadcasting on Sky & Virgin on 11th December 2007), which moved from channel 88 along with sister channels Capital TV moving from 89 to 64, Heart TV from 90 to 65 & Smooth TV from 91 to 66. As the Freeview EPG will be improving in the coming months despite the closure of the COM8 multiplex, this reshuffle of those music channels owned by Global Group helped to expand the COM7 multiplex by making room for more upcoming channels. Since Classic FM closed down for a second time on 1st September 2022, this time due to low audience ratings and increasingly poor viewing figures, channel 63 on the Freeview platform is now occupied by Capital XTRA TV, which launched on the same day to replace Classic FM TV on all platforms.