Sky customers in the UK and Ireland are set to lose access to Eurosport from Wednesday amid a dispute between the satellite operator and Eurosport owner Discovery.
The pair's current carriage deal, which sees Discovery receive a proportion of subscription revenue from Sky in exchange for providing its channels, expires tomorrow. The two broadcasters have been in discussions over a new deal for more than a year, with Discovery said to be pushing for an increase in the amount it receives for its channel portfolio.
As well as Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2, the agreement also covers Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, DMAX, Discovery Science, Discovery Shed, Discovery History, Discovery Turbo, Quest, Investigation Discovery and Home & Health.
A Sky spokesperson told Broadcast: "We have offered hundreds of millions of pounds to Discovery, a $12bn American business, but that wasn't enough. They asked the Sky Group to pay close to £1bn for their portfolio of channels, many of which are in decline.
"Sky doesn't boot channels off our platform. If Discovery don't want their channels to disappear, as their public campaign suggests, they could have made arrangement to stay on Sky, including free-to-air with advertising funding or with their own subscription, but they've chosen not to do so."
A Discovery spokesperson replied: "We have asked them for a few pennies extra per year for each Sky household. We would never choose to come off Sky and abandon our viewers who we value enormously."
Eurosport, which holds the UK broadcast rights to the French Open, US Open and Australian Open, will continue to be available to customers of Virgin Media.
Neil Wilkes
