Eurosport rights...

[shameless self promotion mode] Old style Eurosport start-up from 1997...

YouTube, Eurosport start-up

They could get away with this look today, it doesn't look dated IMO.

That picture disturbance was the switch-over between Quantum and Eurosport. I remember reading somewhere that Quantum was in London and uplinked from there, but Eurosport was uplinked in France. This made the changeover between the 2 quite tricky and (in the early days at least) a conference call was needed between the uplinks and playout centres to co-ordinate it

You're right, that hasn't dated too badly at all. The similar sequence from a year earlier has though: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zC0wDIhPpVc

You're right, it seems subtly different. You'd need to put the two of them together to notice though.

Anyway, I still prefer this version...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PiA8JRUMjCY&feature=related

The good old Sky (half) owned era of Eurosport, soon as they merged with BSB they withdrew all interest from Eurosport due to the fact that BSB had more financially appealing Sport.