Sportitalia

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Sportitalia
Owned by	Holland Coordinator & Service Company
Country	Italy
Website	sportitalia.com
Availability
Terrestrial
Digital	DVB-T, only in Italy
Satellite
Sky Italia	Channel 225
IPTV over ADSL
Alice Home TV	Channel 225
Tiscali TV	Channel

Sportitalia is an Italian satellite TV Channel specialized in sport transmission 24 hours a day. Sports broadcast include soccer, basketball, tennis, cycling, volley, motoristic sports, rugby, wrestling; informations about other sports (winter sports, boxe, golf, surf, skate, swimming, boating, canoe/Kayak, American football, baseball and cricket) is also provided.

[edit] Story

The channel's origins stem after the decision of the "Autorità garante della concorrenza e del mercato", an Italian organism that checks positions of privileges at favour of a firm, to subordinate the creation of Sky Italy to the transfer of the frequencies of the two analogue codified channels possessed by Tele+, Tele+Bianco and Tele+Nero.

The financier Tarak Ben Ammar bought the frequencies in collaboration with the satellite channel Eurosport. The frequencies became of property at 51% of the Holland Coordinator and Service Bv, Tarak Ben Ammar's firm, and at 49% of the TF1 Group, principal commercial French TV channel, which also owns Eurosport. Subsequently, in 2004 Tarak Ben Ammar successfully lobbied the then Italian Communications Minister Maurizio Gasparri for a decree allowing him to convert the concessions from crypted TV to free TV: here, then, Sportitalia.

Seen the excellent share of the first 18 months of the channel, other two DTT channels were created: Si Live 24, an all sports news channels 24 hours a day, and Si Solo Calcio, an all soccer channel (both channels transmits some matches of "Serie B", the Italian Second Division, in exclusive, free with the DTT technology); now, Si Live 24 become Sportitalia 24, and Si Solo Calcio ended its transmissions.

Starting from 6 January 2006 Sportitalia entered in Sky Italy platform and from 16 May 2006 stopped the analogue transmissions.

From 01:00 AM to 07:00 AM (CET) Sportitalia simulcast NBA TV every nights. ^[1]

[edit] External links

• Official Site (Italian)
• Sportitalia Channel on Youtube

[edit] Footnotes