Broadcasting of sports events events from the 1980s, mainly horse races and so-called minority sports. In the early 1990s this arrangement was shaken up by the arrival of pay-TV in the form of BSkyB. Their dedicated sports channels have since become the only place for some major sports to be seen. Starting in 2006 the Irish company Setanta Sports emerged as a challenger to Sky Sports' dominance of the British pay-TV sports market; however, Setanta's UK channel went into bankruptcy administration and off the air in 2009. Between 2009 and 2013 ESPN made an attempt to challenge Sky Sports before its British operations were
Sky (company) Sky (company) Sky is a pan-European media and telecommunications conglomerate. Headquartered in London, it has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. Sky is Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue (), with 23 million subscribers and more than 31,000 employees as of 2018. The company is primarily involved in satellite television and broadband services. Initially formed in 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB became the UK's largest digital pay television company. In 2014, after completing the acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the merged