Viasat Sport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Viasat Sport is the common brand of several sports channels targeting the Nordic countries and Baltic countries owned by Modern Times Group. Viasat Sport is also the name of one tv-channel in the Baltics.
Its main competitors are Canal+ and Eurosport.
[edit] Sports Rights
- American Football
- Basketball
- Golf
- Icehockey
- Allsvenskan (Swedish second division)
- Ice Hockey World Championships
- GET-ligaen (Norweigan first division)
- World Cup of Hockey
- Motorsports
- Soccer
- Coppa Italia
- English League Cup
- Eredivisie (Dutch first division)
- FA Cup
- Football League Championship
- Italian Serie A (only home matches of some teams)
- Ligue 1 (French first division)
- SAS Ligaen (Danish first division)
- Scottish Premier League
- UEFA Champions League
- UEFA Cup
[edit] Channel line-up
Viasat Sport was launched as a pan-Nordic channel in 1999. Some years later, a dedicated Danish channel, Viasat Sport Denmark, lauched and replaced the pan-Nordic version in Denmark.
On February 1, 2004 Viasat launched two new sport channels: Viasat Sport 2 and Viasat Sport 3. The two existing channels were re-branded as Viasat Sport 1.
A "news channel" called Viasat Sport 24 was launched in April 2005. In the end of 2005, Viasat SportN was launched as a joint venture with public broadcaster NRK, replacing the pan-Nordic Viasat Sport 1 in Norway.
Viasat Sport 1 Denmark was replaced by TV 2 Sport in April 2007, a joint venture with state-owned broadcaster TV 2. A channel called TV 2 Sport Xtra is due to launch in the autumn, broadcasting some content in high definition. A dedicated golf channel, Viasat Golf, launched in January 2007 (replacing Viasat Sport 24.
As of 2007, these channels are broadcasting:
- Viasat Sport 1 (for Sweden and Finland)
- Viasat SportN (for Norway, joint venture with NRK)
- TV2 Sport (for Denmark, joint venture with TV 2)
- Viasat Sport Baltic & Russia
- Viasat Sport 2
- Viasat Sport 3
- TV2 Sport Xtra
- Viasat Golf
- Viasat Xtra 1-5