Launched 26 January 1995 Country Australia Headquarters Artarmon | Owned by Fox Sports Pty Limited Owner Fox Sports Pty Limited Founded 1995 | |
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Picture format 576i (SDTV) 16:9
1080i (HDTV) 16:9 Audience share Fox Sports 1: 0.2%
Fox Sports 2: 0.1%
Fox Sports 3: 0.1%
Fox Sports 4: 0.6%
Fox Sports 5: 0.1% (November 2015, ) Slogan We're a FOX Sporting Nation Motto We're a FOX Sporting Nation TV shows Rugby HQ, Fox Sports Live, AFL 360, Back Page Live, Open Mike Profiles | ||
Fox Sports is an Australian group of sports channels, owned by Fox Sports Pty Limited (known as Premier Media Group until February 2012), which is owned by News Corp Australia. Its main competitors are ESPN and beIN Sports.
Contents
- History
- Channels
- Past Channels
- Current programming
- Former programming
- Australian rules football
- Basketball
- Combat sports
- Cricket
- Darts
- Field hockey
- Golf
- Ice hockey
- Formula racing
- Open wheel
- Stock Cars
- Touring Cars
- Sportscars
- Drag racing
- Bikes
- Rally
- Speedway
- Motocross
- Rugby league
- Rugby union
- Soccer
- Surfing
- Ten pin bowling
- Tennis
- Availability
- References
Fox Sports in Australia differs from other Fox Sports-branded channels in the United States and elsewhere around the world in that it is not owned by 21st Century Fox, but by News Corp—the publishing company that was spun out from the larger News Corporation in 2013. Although 21st Century Fox maintains ownership of the remainder of News Corporation's broadcasting assets, its Australian television assets were spun out with the new company as well. Both companies nonetheless remain under the control of the Murdoch family.
History
Fox Sports started life as the Premier Sports Network (later just 'Premier Sports') as the only fully operational local channel at the launch of Australia's first pay-television service, Galaxy. Premier Sports' backers included American company Prime International, which was later to become part of Liberty Media.
The service was launched at 4pm 26 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. Between 1995 and 2010, Fox Sports aired National Basketball League (NBL) games. On 1 March 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 Super 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 in 2002.
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, Grand Slam tennis tournaments, 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 has been the exclusive broadcaster of the Hyundai A-League since its first season in 2005. And in 2006, an A$120 million deal between the FFA and Fox Sports was reached after the end of the first season. Under the deal, Fox Sports will have exclusive rights from 2007 to all Socceroos home internationals, all A-League and Asian Cup fixtures, World Cup qualifiers through the AFC, and all AFC Champions League matches.
The deal to cover the A-league live and exclusive has reaped big rewards for Fox Sports, its ratings were very strong in the 2006-07 season and the 2007 A-league grand final became at the time, Fox Sports highest ever rating event.
Ratings for football have generally been very good. The Socceroos first game of the 2007 AFC Asian Cup, attracted 345,000 viewers, while their Quarter final drew an average of 419,000 - at the time, an all-time record for Australian Pay TV. This record was broken on 1 April 2009, when the Socceroos defeated Uzbekistan to put them very close to qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup - this match was watched by an average of 431,000 people.
In 2007, Fox Sports reached a deal to broadcast 4 games live and exclusive from the AFL each week. This includes the exclusive only Sunday twilight match. In addition they will broadcast Friday night games live into New South Wales and Queensland via channel 518 at no extra charge - normally used for pay-per-view service Main Event. When channel 518 a is used in this way it is promoted as Fox Sports Plus on-air.
The channel is being used increasingly to show live events when Fox Sports has a clash involving its main 3 channels - for example on Saturday 17 March 2007 Fox Sports broadcast a match from the 2007 Cricket World Cup (Ireland v Pakistan) live on 518 - as it was committed to Football, Rugby Union and another cricket match on its main 3 channels.
In 2010 Fox Sports coverage of National Rugby League games held 73 out of the top 100 programs of any type aired Foxtel.
On 5 March 2013, Fox Sports unveiled its new headquarters at Artarmon, New South Wales, where it was announced the main studio would be named the Clive Churchill Studio in name of the NRL immortal Clive Churchill as the studio will house NRL coverage. Technical innovations were the main highlight, with CEO Patrick Delany unveiling the FoxKopter, the FoxMobile Segway, Ref Cam and Cornerpost Cam. Fox Sports also launched a new corporate logo in line with its global affiliate broadcasters.
On 3 September 2014, Fox Sports announced that SPEED and Fuel TV would be rebranded as FOX Sports 4 and FOX Sports 5 on 3 November 2014, of which both will be available in HD. In addition, it was announced FOX Sports News would launch a HD feed on the same day - taking FOX Sports' suite to 7 channels, all available in HD.
Channels
Past Channels
Current programming
Former programming
Australian rules football
Basketball
Combat sports
Cricket
Darts
Field hockey
Golf
Ice hockey
Formula racing
Open wheel
Stock Cars
Touring Cars
Sportscars
Drag racing
Bikes
Rally
Speedway
Motocross
Rugby league
Rugby union
Soccer
Surfing
Ten-pin bowling
Tennis
Availability
Fox Sports is available nationally and is available on Foxtel's My Sport package and Optus featuring Foxtel's Total Sport package.