 | |
| Country | United Kingdom Ireland |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | United Kingdom Ireland |
| Programming | |
| Picture format | 1080i HDTV (downscaled to 16:9 576i for the SDTV feed) |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe BT Group |
| Sister channels | Eurosport 1 Eurosport 2 TNT Sports 1 TNT Sports 2 TNT Sports 3 TNT Sports Box Office |
| History | |
| Launched | 3 August 2009 |
| Former names | ESPN UK (2009–15) BT Sport ESPN (2015–22) BT Sport 4 (2022-23) |
| Availability | |
| Streaming media | |
| BT Sport Player | Watch live (UK only) |
| Virgin TV Anywhere | Watch live (UK only) |
| Now | Watch live (Ireland only) |
TNT Sports 4 is a British sports television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery Sports and the BT Group. It is part of the TNT Sports group of channels in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The channel was established by ESPN Inc. on August 3, 2009 as ESPN (or ESPN UK for disambiguation), after having acquired a share of rights to English Premier League football. It served as ESPN's first UK channel devoted to domestic sport, as its pan-European sister networks ESPN Classic and ESPN America were devoted to archive content and North American sport respectively. Alongside the Premier League, the channel acquired shares of the rights to the FA Cup, Scottish Premier League, Premiership Rugby, and UEFA Europa League among other properties. The channel also carried coverage of sport from the United States (such as the NBA, NFL, NHL, and U.S. college sports, some of which carried over from ESPN America), and ESPN original programmes.
In 2012, ESPN began losing many of its signature sport properties (including the Premier League) to BT Group and its forthcoming BT Sport service. On 25 February 2013, ESPN announced that it would exit the UK and Ireland market and sell its television operations to BT Group, who integrated the channel into BT Sport upon its launch that August. The channel continued to operate under the ESPN name under licence, and was later co-branded as BT Sport ESPN. In 2015, BT Group reached a long-term deal with ESPN International to continue holding British rights to ESPN-owned sports rights and original programmes.
In August 2022, ahead of the joint venture of BT Sport with Warner Bros. Discovery, the channel dropped the ESPN branding and was rebranded as BT Sport 4, with no change in programmes. It was further rebranded as TNT Sports 4 on 18 July 2023 along with the rest of its sister channels; at this point, the channel began to be programmed with no specific scope.