Fox Sports Australia: История и каналы

Australia group of sports channels
the Australian sports division

Fox Sports Australia Pty Limited (formerly Premier Media Group Pty Limited) is the division of Foxtel that owns and operates the Fox Sports television networks and digital properties in Australia. The group operates nine Fox Sports Channels as well as Fox Sports News, Fox Cricket, Fox League, Fox Footy, Watch AFL and Watch NRL. Fox Sports channels such as Fox Netball are available via Foxtel or Kayo. The group's main competitors are beIN Sports, ESPN, Optus Sport and Stan Sport. Unlike The American Fox Sports, the group is not owned directly by the Fox Corporation. However News Corp which holds a 65% stake in Foxtel is Fox Corporation's sister company.

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. 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 10 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 was 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. It now specialises as a 24/7, dedicated Rugby league channel, Fox League. 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 was the exclusive broadcaster of the A League from its first season in 2005 until 2020. In 2006, an A$120 million deal between the Football Federation Australia and Fox Sports was reached after the end of the first season. Under the deal, Fox Sports had exclusive rights from 2007 to all Socceroos home internationals, all A League and Asian Cup fixtures, World Cup qualifiers through the Asian Football Confederation, and all AFC Champions League matches. The deal to cover the A league live and exclusive 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 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. On Saturday 17 March 2007, for example, 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 on Foxtel. In February 2012, the Premier Media Group changed its name to Fox Sports Pty Limited. In February 2012, Premier Media Group changed its name to Fox Sports, with CEO Patrick Delany explaining "The change from Premier Media to Fox Sports provides a stronger reflection of the core business of the company in its name, which is, and will continue to be, sport." On 2 November 2012, News Corp took control of Consolidated Media Holdings after a $2 billion merger was approved by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, Federal Court and Consolidated Media Holding shareholders, making News Corp 100% owner of Fox Sports Pty Ltd. In April 2018 News Corp Australia moved the ownership of the company to one of its subsidiaries Foxtel a joint venture with Telstra. On 5 March 2013, Fox Sports unveiled its new headquarters at Gore Hill in Sydney. It was announced that the main studio would be named the Clive Churchill Studio after rugby league 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 that FOX Sports News would launch a HD feed on the same day, taking FOX Sports' suite to 7 channels, all available in HD. On 23 February 2017, Fox Sports More+, a new channel for live, pop up events was launched.

Fox Sports News: Channel 500. On 3 November 2014, Fox Sports News launched a HD simulcast. In addition, it moved from channel 513 to channel 500. Fox League: Channel 502. Branded as Fox Sports 2 prior to 23 February 2017, then branded as Fox Sports 502 from 23 February 2017 to 27 February 2017. Fox Sports 505: Channel 505. Branded as Fox Sports 4 prior to 23 February 2017. Although Fox Netball broadcasts live on Fox Sports 505 as a pop up channel. Fox Sports UHD 1: Channel 591. Fox Sports UHD 2: Channel 592. Fox Sports UHD 3: Channel 593. Fox Sports UHD 4: Channel 594.

Fox Sports 501: Channel 501. Also available in HD. Replaced by Fox Cricket. The channel ceased broadcasting on 9 February 2017, and was replaced on 23 February 2017 by Fox Sports More+. Fox Sports Ultra HD: Channel 508 in 4K Ultra HD. Channel ended on 10 March 2022 as Foxtel replaced it with "a brand new Ultra HD sport destination" for when 4K events are broadcasting at the same time.

Australian Football League Premiership Season (Broadcasts three matches live during most weekends of the regular season whenever sister channel Fox Footy, is screening another LIVE match at the same time. Fox Sports occasionally screens other programming such as magazine and panel shows that are produced and broadcast by Fox Footy.

Fox Sports is available nationally and is available on Foxtel's My Sport package and Optus featuring Foxtel's Total Sport package.