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Fox Sports
Launched	19th February 1996
Owned by	Premier Media Group
Audience share	3.1% (Apr '07, [1])
Country	Australia
Formerly called	Premier Sports
Website	www.foxsports.com.au
Availability
Satellite
Foxtel Digital	Fox Sports 1: Channel 501 Fox Sports 2: Channel 502 Fox Sports 3: Channel 503 Fox Sports News: Channel 513 FUEL TV: Channel 516
Austar Digital	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
Foxtel Digital	Fox Sports 1: Channel 501 Fox Sports 2: Channel 502 Fox Sports 3: Channel 503 Fox Sports News: Channel 513 FUEL TV: Channel 516
Austar Digital	Fox Sports 1: Channel 501 Fox Sports 2: Channel 502 Fox Sports 3: Channel 503 Fox Sports News: Channel 513 FUEL TV: Channel 516
Optus TV Featuring Foxtel Digital	Fox Sports 1: Channel 501 Fox Sports 2: Channel 502 Fox Sports 3: Channel 503 Fox Sports News: Channel 513 FUEL TV: Channel 516

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.

Contents 1 History 2 FoxSportsNews 3 Channels 4 Programming 4.1 Original programming 5 Sports/competitions televised by Fox Sports (in 2007) 5.1 Australian Rules Football 5.2 Baseball 5.3 Basketball 5.4 Cricket 5.5 Football (soccer) 5.6 Golf 5.7 Gridiron 5.8 Motorsport 5.9 Netball 5.10 Rugby League 5.11 Rugby Union 5.12 Tennis 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

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 3 is used for high rating sports broadcasts, such as the National Rugby League and Cricket. National Rugby League is the highest rating sport on Fox Sports, usually topping Pay TV ratings every week.

Fox Sports has being the exclusive broadcastor of the Hyundai A-League since its first season in 2005. And in 2006, an A$ 120m deal between the FFA and Fox Sports was reached in 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 historic 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.^[1]

Ratings for football (soccer) have generally been very good. The Socceroos first game of the 2007 AFC Asian Cup, attracted 345,000 viewers^[2], while their Quarter final drew an average of 419,000^[3] - an all time record for Australian Pay TV.

In 2007, Fox Sports reached a landmark 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.

Main article: FoxSportsNews

• Fox Sports 1
• Fox Sports 2
• Fox Sports 3
• Fox Sports Plus (Used for Friday Night AFL in Sydney / Brisbane and Saturday Nights in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne although it was also used nationwide for a Socceroos game in June 2007)
• FoxSportsNews
• FUEL TV

• AFL Teams
• The Back Page
• Before the Bounce
• Inside Cricket
• Inside Rugby
• Inside Speed
• NBL Wrap
• NRL on Fox
• NRL Teams
• On the Couch
• PGA Golf Show
• S14 Extra Time
• The Winners
• Total Football

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

• Major League Baseball

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

• 2007 Cricket World Cup (All matches Live)
• International Test Cricket
• One-day Internationals
• Ford Ranger One Day Cup (Usually two to three games live each week)
• Pura Cup (Final Only)
• KFC Twenty20 Big Bash (Most Games live)

• 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)
• 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.

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

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

• Superbike World Championship (Most races live)
• MotoGP (All races live)
• NASCAR (Nextel Cup and Busch Series Live, Craftsman trucks highlights)
• A1 Grand Prix (Most races live)

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

• 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

• Super 14 (All games live and exclusive)
• Tri Nations Series
• Wallabies internationals
• Currie Cup
• Air New Zealand Cup

• ATP Masters Series
• Australian Open
• Roland Garros
• The Championships at Wimbledon
• US Open

• Fox Sports (USA)

• Fox Sports Australia Web Page

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v • d • e Fox Sports

Brands: NFL on FOX • Major League Baseball on FOX • NASCAR on FOX • Bowl Championships • Cotton Bowl • Formula One American cable/satellite networks: Big Ten Network • Fox College Sports • Fox Soccer Channel • Fox Sports Net • Fox Sports en Espanol • Fuel TV • SPEED Channel Owned and operated regional sports networks: Arizona • Bay Area (25% stake) • Detroit • Florida • Houston (separate subfeed of FSN Southwest for the Houston/Southeast Texas markets) • Indiana • Midwest • North • Ohio • Prime Ticket • South • SportSouth • Sun Sports (split ownership with Comcast) • Southwest • West • Wisconsin (separate subfeed of FSN North for most of Wisconsin) Affiliated regional sports networks: New York • Northwest • Pittsburgh • Rocky Mountain • Utah (separate subfeed of FSN Rocky Mountain for the Salt Lake City market) • Comcast SportsNet (Chicago, Mid-Atlantic, New England, and Philadelphia) • MSG Network • New England Sports Network (partial programming) International sports networks: Australia • Canada • Latinoamerica Others: Fox Sports Radio Defunct brands/networks: FSN Chicago • Fox Footy Channel • NHL • NFL Europa on FOX • Prime Network • SportsChannel America

v • d • e Subscription television in Australia
Austar · Foxtel · Neighbourhood Cable · Optus Television · SelecTV · TransACT · UBI World TV
Channels	Entertainment Arena · Bio. · Comedy · E! · Fashion TV · FOX Classics · FOX8 · Hallmark · HOW TO Channel · The LifeStyle Channel · LifeStyle Food · Ovation · Sci Fi · TV1 · UK.TV · W. · Wine TV Movies Movie One · Movie Two · Movie Extra · Movie Greats · Showcase · Showtime · Showtime 2 · Showtime Greats · Turner Classic Movies · World Movies Sports ESPN · Eurosport Asia Pacific · Eurosport News · FOX Sports · FoxSportsNews · Fuel TV · Main Event · Nat Geo Adventure · Setanta Sports · Sky Racing · TVN News Al Jazeera English · BBC World · Bloomberg Television · Channel NewsAsia · CNBC Australia · CNN International · EuroNews · Fox News Channel · NDTV 24x7 · Sky News Australia · The Weather Channel · Weatherzone Documentary Animal Planet · Crime & Investigation Network · Discovery Channel · Discovery Home and Health · Discovery Real Time · Discovery Science · Discovery Travel and Living · The History Channel · National Geographic Kids & Family Boomerang · Cartoon Network · Disney Channel · Nick Jr. · Nickelodeon · Playhouse Disney Channel Music Channel [V] · Channel [V]² · Country Music Channel · MAX · MTV · VH1 · TMF · MCM Specialty Al Jazeera · Antenna · ART · Aurora Community Television · Australian Christian Channel · The Filipino Channel · LBC · MAD World · RAI International · Expo · TVSN Future Sky News Business Channel Defunct Asia Business News · C7 Sport · CNNfn · Fox Footy Channel · Odyssey
Additional resources	Articles Subscription television in Australia · Television in Australia · Television broadcasting in Australia · Regional television in Australia Lists Timeline of Australian television · List of Australian television series (long running) · List of Australian television presenters
Free-to-air television in Australia · Television in Canada · Television in New Zealand · Television in the United Kingdom · Television in the United States