Sky Sports Active

Sky Sports Active is a term used by British TV channel,

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 ...

, to describe its interactive sports service. It was launched in April 1999, on

Sky Sports 1 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 h ...

. Presented by Richard Keys, the first

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

game that was interactive was

Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostl ...

vs.

Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

, and it was exclusive to Sky Digital viewers. It is still available by the push of the red button on the viewer's remote control. Viewers can then choose how they watch selected sporting events. They can select alternative camera angles, access various statistics, catch up with match highlights, choose between live matches and place bets through their TV. Sky Sports Active has proved to be successful. After the praise of the first interactive game, Sky Sports decided to continue the service week by week. Soon Sky offered other sports in the interactive format such as

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

and

rugby Rugby may refer to: Sport * Rugby football in many forms: ** Rugby league: 13 players per side *** Masters Rugby League *** Mod league *** Rugby league nines *** Rugby league sevens *** Touch (sport) *** Wheelchair rugby league ** Rugby union: 1 ...

. Other developments in their interactive football output have included UEFA Champions League Interactive and

Football First ''Football First – Match Choice'' is an interactive television programme on Sky Sports that shows extended highlights of every Premier League match played on the day, except matches shown live on BT Sport. Using the red button, the end user can ...

. {{Sky Sports Sky Sports 1999 in British television Products introduced in 1999 1999 establishments in the United Kingdom