Sport

Happy Birthday Eurosport! Promos from 1990 (VIDEO)

Eurosport has come on leaps and bounds since it started on 5th February 1989. Here are some promos from their first birthday.

I’m a nerd for 90s TV adverts and idents. Although the 00s were my teenage years, I still remember the 90s fondly as a young child. I only had cable TV until I was 6 and even then I didn’t have the sports channels so I missed stuff like Sky Sports and Eurosport. Thank goodness for YouTube.

TV channel promos were gaudy affairs: bright lights, CGI shapes flying across the screen, harsh percussive music with cheesy piano music. A lot of money was ploughed into them and they needed you to watch. Eurosport was no exception when they started in 1989.

The network came out of a way to circumvent restrictions to sports broadcasting rights. The European Broadcasting Union had acquired rights but members could broadcast parts of them. Sky became a commercial partner, and the Eurosport channel launched on 5th February 1989. But tragedy struck in 1991. A rival channel complained to the European Commission about their structure and they were closed down. France’s TF1 Group replaced Sky as co-owners and broadcasting was resumed. TF1 would later take full ownership 10 years later.

But you’ve probably heard enough about European bureaucracy for a lifetime. Those promos! The violently clashing colours dazzled from the get-go. And that voice will be familiar to Sky Sports viewers as he did the idents for them too. This was followed by a brief weather report, later dropped from the channel. And then a happy birthday announcement and competition. How many times did he say Happy Birthday Eurosport? And let’s not forget that competition prize: a lurid ski jacket modelled by what appeared to be a sentient mannequin.

The Eurosport graphics changed many times after the first year, with the most recent alteration – arguably its biggest since creation – taking place in 2015. Do you have any fond memories of Eurosport in the 90s? Let us know in the comments and stream the promos below.

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