Eurosport is a French group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through its international sports unit, it operates two main channels—Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2—across most of its territories, and streams on Max and Discovery+, which superseded Eurosport Player.
Originally a joint venture between the European Broadcasting Union and Sky established in 1989, it was briefly shut down in 1991 following complaints by competitor Screensport. It was subsequently acquired by TF1 Group, and later merged with Screensport. For a period, it was a joint venture between TF1, Canal+ Group, and Havas Images. TF1 Group later bought out the other owners' shares. In 2012, Discovery Communications began to take an ownership in Eurosport, eventually leading towards a full buyout in 2015.
Eurosport is the main rightsholder of the Olympic Games in most of Europe, as well as (with some exceptions) the tennis Grand Slam tournaments.
The network of channels is available in 54 countries, in 20 different languages, providing viewers with European and international sporting events. Eurosport had 157 million subscribers in 2019, marking no increase from the previous year. The Eurosport 2 channel had an audience of 87 million viewers in 2019, an increase of one million.
History
Prior to the creation of Eurosport, the European Broadcasting Union had acquired substantial amounts of sports rights, yet its members were only able to broadcast a fraction of them. This provided the impetus for setting up the Eurosport Consortium, made up of several EBU members, to establish an outlet where these rights could be exploited. Sky Television was chosen as a commercial partner to the EBU project, and the channel launched at 6pm on 5 February 1989. It largely replaced the original Sky Channel (later rebranded Sky One) on European cable systems. Sky Channel refocused to serve only the United Kingdom and Ireland. For a period of time, some of Sky Channel's former pan-European programming was broadcast in the hours before Eurosport's startup, under the brand Sky Europe.
1991 closure
Eurosport was closed down in May 1991 after rival Screensport channel filed a complaint to the European Commission over the corporate structure. The channel was saved later that month when the TF1 Group (formed after the French government privatized the post ORTF-split TF1 5 years prior to the acquisition) stepped in to replace BSkyB as joint owners. It was able to restart its broadcast after 10 days. Broadcasting hours were restricted to 1pm to 11pm, later 8am until midnight before settling at 7.30am and 1am. Its overnight hours were occupied by shopping channel The Quantum Channel.
Eurosport Player & rebrand
On 1 March 1993, the cable and satellite channel Screensport merged with Eurosport. Five days later, that channel's transponder space was taken over by RTL II. Eurosport eventually came under a French consortium comprising the TF1 Group, Canal+ Group and Havas Images. In January 2001, TF1 took full ownership of Eurosport.
In May 2007, Yahoo! Europe and Eurosport formed a co-branded website which Eurosport used as its web portal, including an online TV guide, in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Germany.
In 2008, Eurosport launched an online subscription service, Eurosport Player, that allows internet users to watch both Eurosport and Eurosport 2 live, plus additional coverage not available via broadcast. During the 2009 Australian Open, the internet player offered coverage from five courts.
On 5 April 2011, Eurosport rebranded its channel. The rebrand incorporated six new on-air idents along with a new logo and presentation style both on-air and off-air. The new on-air identity has been designed by Paris-based design company Les Télécréateurs. All localised Eurosport channels and the Eurosport website embraced the new identity.
Analogue closedown
Having been one of the first channels to broadcast on the Astra 1 group of satellites, Eurosport was the last satellite channel in Europe to broadcast in an analogue format. On 30 April 2012, shortly after 03:00 CET, the rest of the remaining analogue channels at 19.2 East ceased transmission. Eurosport's analogue channel finally ceased transmission on 1 May 2012 at 01:30 CET, marking the end of an era in European satellite broadcasting.