Sky Sports News HQ

Sky Sports News HQ (SSNHQ) is a 24-hour sports news channel in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Nordic countries. It is run by Sky plc whose sports channels include Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and Formula One as well as their HD channels.

Overview

The channel focuses predominantly on football (especially during the European football season – August–May) but reports on a wide range of sports; even sports to which Sky do not possess broadcasting rights receive limited coverage. The programming is presented by two reporters in the studio who read the news or introduce short clips featuring highlights and interviews covering a variety of topics. Tabs at the bottom of the screen give unrelated information on a wide range of sports, while a sidebar also shows unrelated league tables or other information. The content of the main studio feed generally repeats depending on the amount of news at a given time, varying from 20 minutes to an hour.

Live sport

On 20 May 2007, SSN broadcast the Conference National play-off Final between Exeter City and Morecambe. This was the first live match to be shown on the channel since certain European games involving British teams were shown to provide exclusivity when competing with the then operational OnSports (owned by ITV) as Sky Sports News was not available at that time via digital terrestrial platforms. This was due to all other Sky Sports channels being occupied by live sport. This enabled Freeview viewers to watch a live match on Sky Sports. The station also had live coverage of Wales v New Zealand on 26 May 2007 and the La Liga tie between Espanyol and Barcelona in December 2007.