The company’s early development was closely linked to changes in betting shop regulation in the United Kingdom, which permitted the installation of television screens showing live racing and replaced the earlier Extel system based on audio commentary and manually updated results boards. Its first live betting shop television service was launched in
Bristol on 5 May 1987, initially supplying coverage from two
horse racing meetings and one
greyhound racing meeting per day to around 100 licensed betting offices, with a target of reaching 3,000 outlets within its first year of operation. During the 1990s, the service was gradually expanded across the
United Kingdom and
Ireland. In 2002, SIS successfully renegotiated its contracts with UK and Irish bookmakers for a further five-year period and was appointed by the betting industry to manage broadcasting rights for 49 UK
racecourses, integrating those races into its service. By 2003, the company was supplying coverage of more than 1,200 UK horse race meetings and 1,500 greyhound meetings annually, in addition to around 300 Irish and 300 South African horse race meetings each year. Following the introduction of the
National Lottery, SIS also expanded its portfolio to include numbers-based betting products, including virtual horse and greyhound racing. In 2008, SIS diversified into broadcast production and satellite services through the acquisition of the
outside broadcasting division of
BBC Resources (BBC Outside Broadcasts). The combined operations were launched as SIS Live in September 2008. By this time, SIS services were received in virtually all betting shops in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as in approximately 300 outlets across Western Europe, totalling around 9,500 shops. The company also distributed betting content to outlets in the Caribbean, Sri Lanka, Italy, and parts of the former Soviet Union. The following year, several SIS departments relocated to the MediaCityUK complex, where the company opened one of the largest satellite teleports in the United Kingdom. From these facilities, SIS broadcast approximately 80 hours of television programming per day for the betting industry, with operations duplicated from its base in
Milton Keynes. The company also handled satellite uplinks and downlinks for international broadcasters and sports organisations, including the BBC,
ITV,
ITN,
Channel 4,
Intelsat,
Sky News,
Sky Sports, Sky Arabia, RRSat, and the European and Asian golf tours. In November 2013, SIS announced a seven-year contract with ITV regional news and ITN to supply high-definition satellite news gathering vehicles using
Ka-band satellite capacity. In 2014, SIS Live closed the outside broadcast department it had acquired from the BBC in 2008 and withdrew from the outside broadcasting market. After operating for many years as a trading name, the satellite news gathering and connectivity division was formally separated into a standalone company, SIS Live Ltd, in 2015, sharing the same chief executive as SIS but becoming responsible for its own commercial decisions. In January 2017, the company announced a rebranding, retaining the SIS acronym but changing its meaning from Satellite Information Services to Sports Information Services, stating that the original name no longer reflected the company’s activities or strategic direction. In 2018, SIS Live Limited was acquired by
NEP Group and rebranded as NEP Connect after a transition period of approximately two months. NEP Connect has since continued to operate as a technical services supplier to SIS. == Ownership and market position ==