Eurosport is to disappear from UK television after more than three decades after the new pay-TV home of sports including Premier League, Champions League and Olympics rebrands as TNT Sports.
BT and the US media giant Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), which have formed a multi-billion pay-TV sport joint venture, also announced on Tuesday that the BT Sport brand name is to be scrapped.
The joint venture, the home of sports rights including cycling, rugby and tennis, has chosen TNT Sports as the master brand – as WBD already uses it as its sports-focused identity in international markets including Latin America and the US.
The move, in July, will mark the end of the BT Sport brand, which was launched in 2013 as the telecoms giant poured billions into creating a pay-TV rival to stem customer losses to Sky.
Eurosport, which has been a staple on British pay-TV since 1989 when it was part of the channel lineup when Rupert Murdoch changed the UK market with the launch of Sky, will be “rolled into the new brand at some time in the future”.
When BT and Warner Bros Discovery announced the deal to launch the pay-TV joint venture in May, the companies said the sports output would ultimately be “brought together under a single brand in the future”.
Andrew Georgiou, managing director of WBD Sports Europe, said on Tuesday: “Today is another important step towards the launch of a simpler and even more compelling offering for sports fans in the UK & Ireland.
“The TNT Sports name is already synonymous with premium live sports in a number of countries around the world and a further sign of the global scale and expertise that WBD brings to the partnership with BT.”
WBD, which has a call option to take full control of the joint venture until September 2026, took a 20% stake in Eurosport in 2012 before taking full ownership from French media group TF1 in 2015.
