The Sport Thread

[SuperSajuuk]

Freesports HD has gone FTV on Satellite in the UK. It means that you need a Sky viewing card to watch it your Sky box at home. I wonder what is the reason for that disappointing decision. Why is the channel being restricted to Sky viewers on Satellite? I used to watch it very frequently before it went FTV.

The last thing I watched on it in full was the NASCAR Highlights from the Kansas Speedway about two nights ago.

Freesports has been missing on Freesat since July 2020, when it was removed without warning from the platform: as far as I know, it was never restored to Freesat since then. According to Freesat though, the removal of FreeSports from the platform was done "at the request of the channel owners' themselves": perhaps related to the frequency sell-offs by Ofcom and the like to make way for 5G or whatever.

It has been on Freeview though, but HD channels on there are incredibly hit and miss depending on location: in fact, where I live, the HD channels that come through on that platform can sometimes be fine for days, then just break up a ton for no reason.

So realistically, Freesports hasn't been FTV on satellite since then, its only been reachable on Sky (to their credit, FreeSports does tell you how to tune your box manually to receive the channel despite it not showing up, but this comes with the limitations of not being in Freesat mode, with no recording or rewind functionality available, its just the channel as-is from the satellite).