Theme tune

Television

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, iconic sports shows have such strong associations with their theme music that the sports themselves are synonymous with the theme tunes, such as association football (The Match of the Day, Grandstand and The Big Match theme tunes), cricket ("Soul Limbo" by Booker T. & the M.G.'s), motorsport (Roger Barsotti's Motor Sport and the bassline from Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain"), tennis (Keith Mansfield's "Light and Tuneful"), snooker ("Drag Racer" by the Doug Wood Band), skiing (Sam Fonteyn's "Pop Looks Bach", the theme to Ski Sunday) and gaelic games ("Jägerlatein" by James Last). Themes in the United States that have become associated with a sport include Johnny Pearson's "Heavy Action" (used for many years as an intro to Monday Night Football), "Roundball Rock" (composed by John Tesh) as the theme for the NBA on NBC during the 1990s and early 2000s, and for Fox College Hoops (from 2018–19 to present) and Jr. NBA Championships (2019–present), "Bugler's Dream" (used in ABC and NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games) and the theme to ESPN's sports highlight show, SportsCenter. A notable theme that was once associated with a sport, but because of its popularity, spread network-wide was the NFL on Fox theme, which was used for Major League Baseball on Fox (2010–2019) and NASCAR on Fox (2011–2015) and Fox UFC (2012–2018) and Premier Boxing Champions (December 2018 to July/August 2019) and Jr. NBA Championships (unknown-2018) broadcasts, and was regarded as the network's single theme by October 2010. CBS' longtime March Madness theme is considered one of the masterpieces of Americans sports theme music, said to deliver a euphoric feeling to many sports fans. In Canada, the soaring backbeats of the Hockey Night in Canada theme, "The Hockey Theme", became so iconic that the piece was sometimes called Canada's second national anthem. It became something of a national scandal when broadcaster CBC Television lost the rights to use the theme in 2008.