Early history The group's history traces back to the original Prime Ticket (now
Bally Sports West), a Los Angeles-based sports network that launched on October 19, 1985. The channel was founded as a joint venture between
Jerry Buss, majority owner of the
Los Angeles Lakers and
Los Angeles Kings, and cable television pioneer
Bill Daniels, who held a minority ownership interest in both professional sports franchises, which carried most of their
NBA and
NHL games on the network. Prime Ticket was headquartered in a small office building across the street from the
Great Western Forum in
Inglewood, then the home stadium of the Kings and Lakers. Prime Ticket caught on with cable subscribers in
Southern California as it was founded at the height of the Lakers' 1980s championship run, and later got a boost from the trade of
Wayne Gretzky to the Kings in 1988. It was also unique among regional sports networks, in that it operated as a basic cable channel, instead of a
premium service as many of the RSNs operating at the time did. Within a few years, Daniels bought out most of Buss's shares in Prime Ticket and became the channel's majority owner. In 1989, Daniels partnered with cable television provider
Tele-Communications Inc. to form a new group of regional sports networks. Prime Ticket served as the flagship charter network, joined by the Prime Sports Network (now
AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain), an owned-and-operated outlet based in
Denver, near TCI's corporate headquarters in the suburb of
Englewood. The partnership also purchased
Dallas-based
Home Sports Entertainment and its share of
Orlando-based
Sunshine Network. HSE had been in operation since 1983, while Sunshine had debuted in 1988. These four networks formed the cornerstones of the Prime Network group, along with several others already owned by TCI. Prime quickly obtained rights to the
Pac-10 Conference football and secured affiliation agreements with other major regional sports networks including
Home Team Sports (
Baltimore),
MSG Network (
New York),
New England Sports Network (
Boston), and
Pro-Am Sports System (
Detroit) Prime formed a partnership with
Raycom Sports that allowed to two companies to jointly-bid on rights and gave Prime the right to broadcast out-of-market games that Raycom already held rights to. Through this partnership Prime broadcast sporting events from the
Southwest and
Big Eight conferences. In 1991, Prime merged its
San Francisco-based Pacific Sports Network (co-owned with
Viacom) with
Rainbow Programming's SportsChannel Bay Area forming
SportsChannel Pacific. This would be the first joint-venture between Prime and its rival
SportsChannel. Negotiations about a larger partnership continued. Finally, in 1993, Liberty Media,
NBC, and Rainbow formed
Prime SportsChannel Networks, a joint venture in which the companies pooled programming and advertising sales between Prime and Cablevision/NBC's SportsChannel. Bill Daniels exited the partnership just before the deal was announced. Through this partnership, the two companies formed two national sports-related channels, the sports news service
NewSport and
American Sports Classics, a network focusing on replays of past sporting events and historical sports documentaries. In August 1994, Daniels sold his share in Prime Ticket and the Prime Network to TCI sister company
Liberty Media. On November 16, 1994, Liberty Media announced that it would adopt a unified identity for its owned-and-operated regional sports networks under the "
Prime Sports" brand. The move was part an alignment of the networks that would include a shift towards a common schedule of programming across the networks, outside each outlet's own regionally exclusive sports telecasts (including the incorporation of sports-related programs aimed at women and children, and the launch of a twice-nightly national sports news program, titled
Press Box; the name originated from a local sports highlights show on Prime Ticket that began airing in 1990). Liberty also created an in-house sales service to sell national advertisements for the regional networks (replacing
Group W Sports Marketing). The rebrand took effect in spring 1995. In 1995, Prime Network's retail subsidiary, Prime Sports Merchandising, purchased select sports apparel stores that maintained locations inside shopping malls throughout the United States, and rebranded them as Prime Sports Shops, using the regional networks to promote the stores.
Restructuring into Fox Sports Net On October 31, 1995,
News Corporation, which sought to create its own group of regional sports networks as a cable venture for
Fox Sports, which was formed the year prior through the
Fox Broadcasting Company's acquisition of the television rights to the
NFL's
National Football Conference, acquired a 50% ownership interest in Liberty's U.S.-based regional Prime Sports networks and its international networks
Premier Sports (Australia),
Prime Deportiva (Latin America) and
Prime Sports Asia. Liberty and News Corporation created Fox/Liberty Networks as a
holding company for the co-owned regional sports properties. In exchange, News Corporation also sold a 7.5% interest in
Star TV to Liberty Media. On July 3, 1996, News Corporation and Liberty Media announced that the Prime Sports networks would be relaunched as part of the new
Fox Sports Net group, with the eight Prime Sports owned-and-operated networks adopting brands that combined the "Fox Sports" name with the state or region served by the respective network. the Prime Sports-branded affiliates were officially relaunched as Fox Sports Net on November 1, 1996. On December 22, 2006, News Corporation sold its interests in
FSN Pittsburgh (the former "Prime Sports KBL"),
FSN Utah (the former "Prime Sports Intermountain West"),
FSN Northwest (the former "Prime Sports Northwest") and
FSN Rocky Mountain (the former "Prime Sports Rocky Mountain") to Liberty Media, in an asset trade in which News Corporation also traded its 38.5% ownership stake in satellite provider
DirecTV for $550 million in cash and stock, in exchange for Liberty Media's 16.3% stake in the company. Liberty later spun off the four networks in a partial asset
spin-off of DirecTV into a separate company of the same name, while Liberty also increased its share in DirecTV from 48% to 54%, and Liberty owner
John Malone and his family acquired an additional 24% interest.
DirecTV Sports Networks, which assumed responsibility for the four Prime-turned-FSN networks, rebranded them under the
Root Sports brand on April 1, 2011. ==Networks==