Fox Sports (Australian TV network)


Fox Sports is an Australian group of sports channels, which is owned by Fox Sports Pty Limited. Its main competitors are ESPN and beIN Sports, both available as part of a Foxtel subscription.
Fox Sports in Australia differs from other Fox Sports-branded channels in the United States and elsewhere around the world in those are not owned by Fox Corporation and The Walt Disney Company respectively, but by Foxtel. Both the U.S and Australian companies nonetheless remain under the control of the Murdoch family, as Foxtel is majority-owned by the Murdoch-controlled News Corp Australia.

History

Fox Sports started life as the Premier Sports Network 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 later became part of Liberty Media.
The service was launched at 16:00 on 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 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 has been the exclusive broadcaster of the Hyundai A-League since its first season in 2005. 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. On Saturday 17 March 2007, for example, Fox Sports broadcast a match from the 2007 Cricket World Cup 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.
On 5 March 2013, Fox Sports unveiled its new headquarters at Artarmon, New South Wales. It was announced that the main studio would be named the Clive Churchill Studio after 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 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. In 2018, as well as launching a second new channel in a row, Fox Sports Pty Ltd was merged with Foxtel.

Corporate history

Fox Sports Australia Pty Limited is a subsidiary of Foxtel that owns sports-related television networks and digital properties. It owns Australian subscription TV channels Fox Sports, Fox Sports News and Fox Footy and a range of video, text and statistical content for television, mobile phone and online delivery. It operates the Watch AFL and Watch NRL subscription streaming services which show Australian sports content to global audiences.
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 and 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.

Fox Sports News

Channels

Current programming

Australian rules football

Formula racing

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