Fox Sports is the name of Australia's most watched sports channels. They are owned by the Premier Media Group, which is in turn owned by News Corporation, and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. Its only competitor in the Australian Pay-TV Sports market is ESPN, which only shows international events.
| Ownership | |
|---|---|
| Owner | Premier Media Group |
Although it shares the "Fox" name, Fox Sports is not affiliated with the AFL channel Fox Footy Channel, which is operated by pay-TV network Foxtel.
History
Fox Sports started life as the Premier Sports Network (later just 'Premier Sports') on Australia's first pay-television service, Galaxy. Premier Sports' backers included American company Prime International, which was later to become part of Liberty Media (itself bought out by News Corporation).
The service started in January 1995 in Sydney and made a name for itself, securing the rights to Australia's cricket tour of the West Indies. Previously Australian cricket tours had been covered on the Nine Network on free-to-air, and Nine tried to stop the broadcast under Australia's 'anti-siphoning' rules, which state that certain popular sporting events cannot be screened exclusively on pay television. PSN signed a deal with Network Ten to share the broadcast rights.
When Foxtel launched its cable service later that year, PSN was included as part of the package.
On March 1, 1996, PSN was relaunched as Fox Sports Australia, to coincide with the new Super 12 rugby union competition and the proposed launch of the Super League.
In 1997 a secondary channel was launched on Foxtel to carry broadcasts of the new National Rugby League competition. Fox Sports and its chief competitor, Sports Australia shared the rights to NRL broadcasts as a result of the legal settlement in the Super League war. The channel on Foxtel was later relaunched as Fox Sports Two, at first broadcasting from Friday through Monday each week, and later expanding to a full 24-hour, 7-day service.
When Optus Vision dropped the C7 Sport service in March 2002, they started carrying the Fox Sports channels. These were referred to by Optus as "Optus Sports 1" and "Optus Sports 2" in Optus promotional material; on-air programming referred to the channels as simply "Sports One" and "Sports Two", although programming such as the nightly Fox Sports News bulletins retained the Fox name. Optus dropped the "Optus Sports" name in October 2002.
Fox Sports Two is generally used to cover bigger events that require large amounts of air time, such as the 1998 Winter Olympics, the French Open tennis tournament, and the 2004 European Football Championship.
During the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Fox Sports carried an additional eight channels dedicated to Games events. These were available to customers at an additional charge.
Fox Sports Three is set to launch in October 2006. It is speculated that the channel will replace Fox Footy Channel on the Foxtel service, although this has not been confirmed[1]. Fox Sports Three will provide expanded coverage of Australian cricket and soccer.
Current Channels
- Fox Sports 1
- Fox Sports 2
- Fox Sports News
- Fuel TV