ESPN Classic was a British-based European sports television channel which first launched in France in March 2002, followed by Italy in July 2002, and pan-Europe in December 2003. On 13 March 2006 ESPN Classic launched on

Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...

channel 442 in the UK and Ireland, the first channel in the UK under the

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

branding. On 3 August 2009, ESPN Classic launched on

Virgin Media Virgin Media Limited is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 ...

channel 533 as a part of the XL pack, and in early 2011

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films Digital distribution, digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typica ...

content started to appear on the Virgin Media platform. On 14 August 2009, ESPN Classic launched on UPC Ireland channel 409 as a part of the Max package. It broadcast a range of archive sports coverage, with a large emphasis on

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

. On 25 February 2013,

BT Group BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

agreed to acquire ESPN's UK and Ireland TV channels business, consisting of ESPN and ESPN America, the value of the deal was not disclosed, but BT is understood to have paid "low tens of millions". ESPN Classic, which was not part of the BT deal, ceased transmission on satellite across Europe, the Middle East and Africa at midnight on 1 August 2013.

Programming

Much of the channel's output was football. This included action from the

Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football Lea ...

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in domestic Football in England, English football. First played during ...

matches,

European Cup The UEFA Champions League (UCL) is an annual club association football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that is contested by top-division European clubs. The competition begins with a round robi ...

European Cup Winners Cup The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was a European football club competition contested annually by the winners of domestic cup competitions. The competition's official name was originally the European Cup Winners' Cup; it was renamed the UEFA Cup Winne ...

and League Cup finals and some

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

games. ESPN Classic also showed games from the

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often called the World Cup, is an international association football competition among the senior List of men's national association football teams, men's national teams of the members of the FIFA, Fédération Internatio ...

following a multi-year deal to show 150 classic FIFA World Cup matches from

1930 Events January * January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will be on J ...

2006 2006 was designated as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification. Events January * January 1– 4 – Russia temporarily cuts shipment of natural gas to Ukraine during a price dispute. * January 12 – A stampede during t ...

. Though most coverage on the channel was from the colour era, it had shown original black-and-white footage of

finals going back as far as 1959. A significant proportion of the football action on ESPN Classic was archive ITV football coverage, including matches covered by regional ITV companies. However much of the football seen on the channel was not shown with the original commentary. Instead, many games, especially the Premier League and FA Cup games, tended to feature commentary dubbed on more recently by Jon Champion and Paul Dempsey, or commentary by

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British broadcasting of sports events, subscription sports channels operated by the satellite television, satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television ...

broadcasters such as

Martin Tyler Martin Tyler (born 14 September 1945) is an English Association football, football commentator. He worked as a commentator for Sky Sports from 1990 to 2023, covering the Premier League and UEFA Champions League, as well as other domestic and inte ...

and Alan Parry which seemed to be from the international feed of the time. Similarly, the footage from games where commentary was later added did not include original on-screen captions, with ESPN adding captions themselves. Some 1960s European Cup finals also had a new commentary dubbed on by Tony Jones. The channel also showed some

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

international matches, including action from the

Rugby World Cup The Men's Rugby World Cup is a rugby union tournament contested every four years between the top international teams, the winners of which are recognised as the World championship, world champions of the sport. The tournament is administer ...

, as well as past matches from the rugby union Premiership. Other sports featured included

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

, ESPN-produced vintage

boxing Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...

matches,

The Ultimate Fighter ''The Ultimate Fighter'' is an American reality television series and mixed martial arts (MMA) competition produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Pilgrim Media Group currently airing on ESPN+. It previously aired for fourteen s ...

and more recently, action from American sports to complement the live American sports action which was broadcast on

and ESPN America. In addition to the programmes mentioned above, ESPN Classic had made a variety of other programmes. These included ''Sports Years'' as well as many football compilation programmes. In addition, to mark the 30th anniversary of

, the channel showed the ESPN Films' ''

30 for 30 ''30 for 30'' is the title for a series of documentary films airing on ESPN, its sister networks, and online highlighting interesting people and events in sports history. This includes four "volumes" of 30 episodes each, a 13-episode series und ...

'' series. ESPN Classic regularly repeated the sporting action that it showed on the channel with the same material often being shown time and time again. Some of the action, especially ESPN-produced programmes and series, had been broadcast on the channel on dozens of different occasions.

BBC-produced programming

During the first three years of the channel sporting action from the BBC was featured extensively. However, this deal expired in mid 2009 and was seemingly not renewed as for the next eighteen months the channel did not feature any sport produced by the BBC. Therefore, sports such as

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...

, athletics,

darts Darts is a competitive sport in which two or more players bare-handedly throw small projectile point, sharp-pointed projectile, projectiles known as dart (missile), darts at a round shooting target, target known as a #Dartboard, dartboard. Point ...

and

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...

were not shown on the channel nor were events such as domestic cricket prior to 1999 (the year that the BBC lost the rights to show live cricket), Wimbledon tennis, the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games (Olympics; ) are the world's preeminent international Olympic sports, sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a Multi-s ...

and football coverage to which the BBC had the exclusive rights, which had included showings of 1970s and 1980s editions of

Match of the Day ''Match of the Day'' (abbreviated to ''MOTD'') is a Association football, football highlights programme, typically broadcast on BBC One on Saturday nights during the Premier League season. ''Match of the Day'' is one of the BBC's longest-runn ...

under the title of "The Dead Good Match" with the opening and closing titles removed, and some editions were truncated, with only one of the matches covered in a particular programme being shown. One exception had been BBC-produced coverage of rugby union's Five Nations tournament shown during the 2011 Six Nations Championship. In March 2011, a new deal between ESPN and the BBC was signed which provided ESPN Classic with access to around 80 hours of footage. However, this was far less than under the previous agreement which had given the channel access to around 630 hours. The new deal meant that previous ESPN-produced programmes based on the BBC archive, such as the darts series ''Bellies and Bullseyes'', were once again shown on the channel along with new programmes, such as athletics series ''Solid Gold - Team GB'' and other one-off programmes such as a compilation of top Grand Nationals. This new deal with BBC Sport coincided with a new look for the channel, the first new look since ESPN UK launched in summer 2009.

Live action

ESPN Classic occasionally showed live action when two events to which ESPN has the rights took place at the same time. The first live sport that the channel showed was two

UEFA Europa League The UEFA Europa League (UEL), usually known simply as the Europa League, is an annual association football, football club competition organised since 1971 by the UEFA, Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European footb ...

matches, on 29 September and 20 October 2011. The first of the two games was

Maribor Maribor ( , , ; also known by other #Name, historical names) is the List of cities and towns in Slovenia, second-largest city in Slovenia and the largest city of the traditional region of Styria (Slovenia), Lower Styria. It is the seat of the ...

and

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

. On 9 January 2012, the channel broadcast the third evening of the

BDO World Darts Championship The BDO World Darts Championship was a professional darts tournament organised by the British Darts Organisation (BDO) and held annually from 1978 to 2020. The championship was first held at the Heart of the Midlands Nightclub in the Englis ...

because the main channel was showing a third round match from the

. This happened again a year later when for the same reason ESPN Classic again showed the third evening's action. On 5 May 2012, ESPN Classic broadcast two live events - the final day of rugby union's Premiership league season and a football match from

Serie A The Serie A (), officially known as Serie A Enilive in Italy and Serie A Made in Italy abroad for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Italy and the highest tier of the Italian football league system. Establish ...

. This was due to the main channel showing live coverage of the

Final. On 1 September 2012, ESPN Classic showed a live rugby union match from the Aviva Premiership because the main network was broadcasting its weekly match from football's Premier League. The same happened two weeks later although the clash this time was due to the main channel showing the

Scottish Premier League The Scottish Premier League (SPL) was the Scottish football league system, top-level league competition for professional Association football, football clubs in Scotland. The league was founded in 1998, when it broke away from the Scottish Foo ...

. On 20 and 22 September 2012, ESPN Classic showed live coverage of the European Darts Championship because the main channel was showing the UEFA Europa League and the Aviva Premiership respectively. The following day (Sunday 23rd) ESPN swapped its coverage with the darts being shown on the main channel with much of its traditional Sunday fare of European league football plus another Aviva Premiership match airing on Classic. On 4 May 2013, ESPN Classic was used to provide coverage of a second game from the final set of league matches of the 2012–13 Aviva Premiership season.

References

External links

ESPN Classic
{{DEFAULTSORT:Espn Classic (Uk)

Classic A classic is an outstanding example of a particular style; something of Masterpiece, lasting worth or with a timeless quality; of the first or Literary merit, highest quality, class, or rank – something that Exemplification, exemplifies its ...

Defunct television channels in the Netherlands Defunct television channels in Italy Television channels in Flanders Television channels in Belgium Television channels in the United Kingdom Sports television channels in the United Kingdom Sports television in the United Kingdom Sports television in Poland Sports television in Italy Italian-language television stations 2002 establishments in Italy 2013 disestablishments in Italy Television channels and stations established in 2002 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2013 Classic television networks

Programming

BBC-produced programming

Live action

See also

References

External links