ITV Sport Channel was a short-lived

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals ** Digital camera, which captures and stores digital ...

sport

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

channel, that was owned by

Carlton Communications Carlton was a British media company. It was led by Michael P. Green and listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1983 until 2 February 2004, when it was bought by Granada plc in a corporate takeover to form ITV plc. Carlton shareholders gained ...

and

Granada plc Granada plc (previously called Granada Ltd, Granada Group plc, and Granada Media plc) was a British conglomerate best known as the parent from 1954 to 2004 of the Manchester-based Granada Television. The company merged with Carlton Communicatio ...

. It was launched on 11 August 2001 and closed on 12 May 2002, precipitating

ITV Digital ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network. Its main shareholders were Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc, owners ...

's collapse over a month later. The channel mostly broadcast live

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competi ...

games alongside other sports, and had two sister channels, ITV Sport Plus and ITV Sport Select.

Matt Smith Matthew Robert Smith (born 28 October 1982) is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor in the BBC series '' Doctor Who'' (2010–2013), Daemon Targaryen in the HBO series ''House of the Dr ...

, Tony Dorigo,

Russell Osman Russell Charles Osman (born 14 February 1959) is an English former professional footballer who played as a centre back in the Football League for Ipswich Town, Leicester City, Southampton, Bristol City, Brighton & Hove Albion and Cardiff City. Os ...

, Bob Wilson, John Hendrie,

Garry Nelson Garry Paul Nelson (born 16 January 1961) is an English former professional footballer who played as a striker or left winger in the Football League for Southend United, Swindon Town, Plymouth Argyle, Brighton & Hove Albion, Charlton Athlet ...

, Guy Havord,

Guy Mowbray Guy Nicholas Mowbray (born 16 February 1972) is an English football commentator, who primarily appears on the BBC and BT Sport. While working for Eurosport at the 1998 World Cup, he became the youngest ever television commentator on a World Cup ...

Peter Drury Peter Drury (born 24 September 1967) is a British sports commentator who currently works for NBC Sports as the lead main (play-by-play) commentator for its Premier League coverage in the United States. Prior to joining NBC Sports, Drury was the ...

Jon Champion Jonathan Martin Champion (born 23 May 1965) is a British sports commentator currently working as the lead association football commentator for ESPN (US). Champion is a well-established and experienced commentator who has also worked for the BBC ...

, David Fairclough,

Paul Walsh Paul may refer to: * Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) *Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...

Jim Beglin James Martin Beglin (born 29 July 1963) is an Irish former professional footballer and current co-commentator for RTÉ, CBS Sports, BT Sport, and Premier League Productions. Playing career Shamrock Rovers Beglin played schoolboy football ...

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, Peter Stevenson, Carrie Frais,

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and Dave Beckett presented and commentated for the channel.

History

Champions Channel/ONsport

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 28 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 The ATP Masters 1000 tournaments (previously known as ATP Masters Series) is an annual series of nine tennis tournaments featuring the top-ranked players on the ATP Tour. The series' events have been held in Europe and North America since the ...

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.

ITV Sport Channel

The channel was launched on 11 August 2001 with

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Watford Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, and ...

in the First Division as the game shown. The channel was also available on

NTL NTL may refer to: Companies * NTL Incorporated and NTL Internet, later Virgin Media, communications media company ** NTL Ireland, later Virgin Media Ireland * Arqiva, UK company formerly ''NTL Broadcast'' and ''National Transcommunications L ...

cable in addition to ITV Digital. However it did not broadcast on Sky or on Telewest. Two spin-off channels titled called ITV Sport Plus and ITV Sport Select were also available as ITV Digital exclusives. ITV Sport Select showed the on-demand

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

football matches from

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

and ITV Sport Plus was available without charge to allow viewers to watch a match or sport event if there was a scheduling conflict.

Closure

The cost of the Football League deal proved one too many a burden for the struggling ITV Digital. The

Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in Association football around the wor ...

refused to accept a £130m pay cut in its £315m deal with the network, and would soon cause ITV Digital itself to be placed into administration on 27 March 2002. The collapse caused severe financial difficulties for lower-division football clubs who had budgeted for large incomes from the television contract. Following the closure of the majority of the subscription channels on ITV Digital on 1 May 2002, the ITV Sport Channel, however, continued to broadcast, being re-designated as a free-to-air channel. The closure of the channel was announced two days later on 3 May, and closed as planned on 11 May, after its coverage of the Division 2 play-off final between

Brentford Brentford is a suburban town in West London, England and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It lies at the confluence of the River Brent and the Thames, west of Charing Cross. Its economy has diverse company headquarters buildings wh ...

and Stoke. On August 1, 2002, the

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.

Programming

Throughout its time on air, football was the mainstay of the channel. In addition to live Football League coverage, the channel showed Saturday night primetime highlights from all three divisions. The

coverage previously shown on ONsport moved to ITV Sport Channel to help to fill out the channel's schedule. As well as football, other sports were also covered, including ATP Masters Series tennis, snooker, British

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

and boxing from the United States. The channel also acquired secondary rights to European Cup

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In it ...

Successor

Eventually, in 2017, ITV would launch a similar channel by the name ITV Box Office, showing

pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program g ...

boxing and wrestling events; that service also shut down shortly after in 2020.

References

{{Granada and Carlton Television channels and stations established in 2001 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2002 Defunct British television channels Sports television channels in the United Kingdom ITV (TV network) ITV Sport