ERT Sports ( el, ΕΡΤ Sports) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...

television channel, owned by the

Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation ( el, Ελληνική Ραδιοφωνία Τηλεόραση AE, Ellinikí Radiofonía Tileórasi SA) or ERT () is the state-owned public radio and television broadcaster of Greece. History Overview ERT b ...

, the state broadcaster of Greece. It was the first high-definition

television channel A television channel is a terrestrial frequency or virtual number over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the terrestrial or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with ...

in the country and started broadcasting on 27 April 2011 in several large cities such as

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

and

Alexandroupoli Alexandroupolis ( el, Αλεξανδρούπολη, ), Alexandroupoli, or Alexandrople is a city in Greece and the capital of the Evros regional unit. It is the largest city in Western Thrace and the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. It h ...

as ERT HD. ERT HD broadcast such important international events as the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a multi ...

, the

UEFA European Championship The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations ( UEFA). The competition is conte ...

and the

Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), sometimes abbreviated to ESC and often known simply as Eurovision, is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), featuring participants representing pr ...

. It broadcasts at

1080i 1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the scree ...

frame, encoded at

Advanced Video Coding Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

on the

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Feb ...

standard. On 1 December 2020, ERT Sports was technically replaced on terrestrial television by ERT1 HD, while at the same time, HD broadcasts began in 80% of the country's population for ERT2 and ERT3. ERT Sports is currently broadcast only through the ERTFLIX platform, in three separate instances (ERT Sports, ERT Sports 2 and ERT Sports 3), to allow concurrent broadcasting of athletic events. Following ERT Sports' closure, ERT 1 is responsible for the broadcast of the

French Open The French Open (french: Internationaux de France de tennis), also known as Roland-Garros (), is a major tennis tournament held over two weeks at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris, France, beginning in late May each year. The tournament and ve ...

, the finals of the

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competi ...

UEFA Europa League The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. ...

and

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

and ERT 3 for games of the

Greek Basket League The Greek Basket League (GBL), often also referred to as the Greek A1 Basketball League, or Greek Basketball Championship (originally called Panhellenic Basketball Championship), and also known as the Stoiximan Basket League for sponsorship reaso ...

, the

Basketball Champions League The Basketball Champions League (BCL) is an annual professional basketball competition for European clubs, organised by FIBA. It is the top-level competition organised by FIBA Europe, therefore the champion participates in the FIBA Interconti ...

, the

A1 Ethniki Volleyball The A1 Ethniki ( el, Α1 Εθνική Κατηγορία), often referred to as the Greek Volleyball League, is the highest professional volleyball league in Greece. It is run by the Hellenic Volleyball Federation. It is considered one of the top n ...

and the Greek handball championship, as well as the

Super League Greece 2 The Super League Greece 2 ( el, Ελληνική Σούπερ Λίγκα 2) is the 28 team two-group second division of professional football in Greece, being a feeder-league to the top-level Super League usually played from September to May. His ...

. When two or more athletic events are scheduled for simultaneous or near simultaneous broadcast, both ERT 3 and ERT Sports channels are used; the ERT Sports channels do not broadcast other content otherwise. During the XXXII Olympiad, on certain days, all ERT channels, terrestrial and via the internet were utilized for the broadcast of athletic events.

Lawsuit

The Greek private television channel

Skai SKAI is a Ukrainian pop-rock band. Skai may refer to: * Skai Group, Greek media group, contains : :* Skai TV, a Greek television network. :* Skai 100.3, a Greek radio station. * a fictional river located near the town of Ulthar in the Dreamland ...

filed a lawsuit against state broadcaster in 2011 for what it claimed was an illegal

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

on high-definition programming by the public broadcaster. In its lawsuit, Skai claimed that ERT was in violation of

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

regulations regarding

competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, ind ...

Logos

File:EPTHD logo.svg, 27/04/2011 - 11/06/2013 File:EPT HD.png, 11/06/2015 - 09/02/2019 File:ERT SPORTS HD LOGO.png, 09/02/2019 - 28/09/2020 File:ERTSPORTS logo 2020.svg, 28/09/2020 - present

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=October 2019 Hellenic Television Defunct Greek television channels Greek-language television stations Television channels and stations established in 2011 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2020 2011 establishments in Greece 2020 disestablishments in Greece Public television in Greece Sports television networks Sports television in Greece

Lawsuit

Logos

See also

References