Fox Sports (Australia)

Infobox TV channel
dummy parameter=
country = Australia
former names = Premier Sports
name= Fox Sports
logofile= Logo-foxsports.gif
launch= 19th February 1996
picture format = "Fox Sports 1, 2, 3 and News:" 16:9, 576i (SDTV)
"Fox Sports HD:"
16:9, 1080i (HDTV)
"FUEL TV:"
16:9, 576i (SDTV)
share = "Fox Sports 1: 0.9%"
"Fox Sports 2: 1.0%"
"Fox Sports 3: 0.6%"
"Fox Sports News: 0.3%"
"FUEL TV: 0.0%"
Total 2.8%
share as of = April 2008
share source= [ [http://www.oztam.com.au/documents/2008/A2_20080413.pdf Ratings Week 16 (13/04/2008 - 19/04/2008)] ]
owner= Premier Media Group
web= [http://foxsports.com.au/ www.foxsports.com.au]
terr avail=Not Available
sat serv 1=Foxtel Digital
sat chan 1="Fox Sports 1": Channel 501
"Fox Sports 2": Channel 502
"Fox Sports 3": Channel 503
"Fox Sports News": Channel 513
"FUEL TV": Channel 516
sat serv 2=Austar Digital
sat chan 2="Fox Sports 1": Channel 501
"Fox Sports 2": Channel 502
"Fox Sports 3": Channel 503
"Fox Sports News": Channel 513
"FUEL TV": Channel 516
cable serv 1=Foxtel Digital
cable chan 1="Fox Sports 1": Channel 501
"Fox Sports 2": Channel 502
"Fox Sports 3": Channel 503
"Fox Sports News": Channel 513
"FUEL TV": Channel 516
cable serv 2=Austar Digital
cable chan 2="Fox Sports 1": Channel 501
"Fox Sports 2": Channel 502
"Fox Sports 3": Channel 503
"Fox Sports News": Channel 513
"FUEL TV": Channel 516
cable serv 3=Optus TV Featuring Foxtel Digital
cable chan 3="Fox Sports 1": Channel 501
"Fox Sports 2": Channel 502
"Fox Sports 3": Channel 503
"Fox Sports News": Channel 513
"FUEL TV": Channel 516
cable serv 4=Foxtel HD+
cable chan 4="Fox Sports HD": "Channel 205"|

Fox Sports is an Australian group of sports channels. They are owned by the Premier Media Group, which is in turn owned by News Corporation, and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. Its main competitor is ESPN, which has little local content. News Corporation also controls Fox Sports (USA) and the main pay-television sports network in the United Kingdom, Sky Sports.

Although it shares the "Fox" name, Fox Sports is not affiliated with the now defunct Fox Footy Channel, which was operated by Foxtel until its closing at 4am on October 1 2006.

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.

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.

Since 1995, Fox Sports has been airing National Basketball League (NBL) games.

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, 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 m 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. As part of the deal Fox Sports (and Foxtel) agreed to only call the world game by its proper name, football (rather than the American term - Soccer).

The deal to cover the A-league live and exclusive has already reaped big rewards for Fox Sports, its ratings were very strong in the 2006-2007 season and the 2007 A-league grand final became (at the time) Fox Sports highest ever rating event. [cite web
url=http://www.crikey.com.au/Media/20070219-Media-briefs-and-TV-ratings.html | title=Big Audience For A-league Final ]

Ratings for football (soccer) have generally been very good. The Socceroos first game of the 2007 AFC Asian Cup, attracted 345,000 viewers [cite web | url=http://www.smh.com.au/news/asian-cup-news/soccer-boots-big-league/2007/07/09/1183833431250.html | title=Soccer boots big league] , while their Quarter final drew an average of 419,000 [cite web |url=http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/56973,japan-game-a-tv-record.aspx | title=Japan Game a TV Record] - an all time record for Australian Pay TV.

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- 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 - for example on Saturday 17th of 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.

FoxSportsNews

Channels

*Fox Sports 1
*Fox Sports 2
*Fox Sports 3
*Fox Sports Plus: The Main Event channel is used as an "overflow" channel when multiple live sporting events need to be broadcast. This includes Friday Night AFL in Sydney / Brisbane and Saturday Nights in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. It was also used nationwide for a Socceroos game in June 2007. And often when English Premier League has multiple games on the one night, although usage in this capacity is rare now that the "Viewer's Choice" system of showing multiple matches on one channel through multi-casting (The "Red Button") is used.
*FoxSportsNews
*FUEL TV
*Fox Sports HD (Launched June 2008)

Programming

Original programming

* "The Back Page"
* "AFL Teams"
* "Before The Bounce"
* "Inside Cricket"
* "Inside Rugby"
* "Inside Speed"
* "Starting 5"
* "NRL on Fox"
* "NRL Teams"
* "On The Couch"
* "PGA Golf Show"
* "Super 14 Extra Time"
* "Total Football"

ports/competitions televised by Fox Sports (in 2008)

Australian Rules Football

*Australian Football League (4 Exclusively Live matches each round, along with replays/highlights of all matches)

Baseball

*Major League Baseball (shared with ESPN Australia)

Basketball

*National Basketball League (Usually two matches per week live)
*National Basketball Association (Usually two matches per week live)

Cricket

*International Test Cricket (overseas only, home series on Nine Network)
*One-day Internationals (overseas only, home series on Nine Network)
*Ford Ranger One Day Cup (Usually two to three games live each week, exclusive)
*Sheffield Shield (Final Only, exclusive)
*KFC Twenty20 Big Bash (Most Games live and exclusive)

Association football (soccer)

*Hyundai A-League (All games live)
*Hyundai A-League Finals Series (All games live)
*Asian Champions League (All games involving Australian teams live, plus some others)
*AFC Asian Cup (All Games, 28 games live)
*J-League (Number of games televised unknown as yet) [cite web | url=http://blogs.foxsports.com.au/football/index.php/foxsports/comments/arise_sons_of_the_desert/ | title=Arise Sons of the Desert]
*Socceroos internationals (All games excluding FIFA World Cup Finals games)
*English Football League Cup (Live coverage from Quarter Finals onwards)
*English Football League Championship (Live coverage of 1-2 games a week plus highlights show)
*English Premier League (Live coverage of almost every game through 'press red' active feature, plus highlights show). The rights contract disallows showing every match from each club, meaning at a minimum, 10 matches a season will not be shown. With the active service, up to 7 matches a night are shown.

Golf

*American PGA Tour (All rounds)
*European PGA Tour

Gridiron (American football)

*National Football League (2-3 games a week)

Motorsport

*Superbike World Championship (Most races live)
*MotoGP (All races live)
*NASCAR (Sprint Cup Live, Craftsman trucks highlights)
*A1 Grand Prix (Most races live)

Netball

*Tasman Trophy Netball League in 2008 (Coverage of all games confirmed)

Rugby League

*National Rugby League (5 games a week live and Exclusive. When 2 games are played on a Saturday at 7;30pm AEST the second game is only available on digital.)
*Super League
*Challenge Cup
*Toyota Cup

Rugby Union

*Super 14 (All games live and exclusive)
*Tri Nations Series (shared with Seven Network)
*Wallabies internationals (shared with Seven Network)
*Currie Cup
*Air New Zealand Cup

Tennis

*ATP Masters Series (exclusive)
*Australian Open (shared with Seven Network)
*Roland Garros (exclusive)
*The Championships at Wimbledon (shared with Nine Network)
*US Open (exclusive up to quarter finals then shared with Nine Network)

Availability

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

References

ee also

*Fox Sports (USA)

External links

* [http://www.foxsports.com.au Fox Sports Australia Web Page]