ESPN Classic was a British-based European sports television channel which first launched in France in March 2002, followed by Italy in July 2002, and pan-Europe in December 2003.

[7] ESPN Classic, which was not part of the BT deal, ceased transmission on satellite across Europe, the Middle East and Africa at midnight on 1 August 2013.

[8] Though most coverage on the channel was from the colour era, it had shown original black-and-white footage of European Cup finals going back as far as 1959.

Instead, many games, especially the Premier League and FA Cup games, tended to feature commentary dubbed on more recently by Jon Champion and Paul Dempsey, or commentary by Sky Sports broadcasters such as Martin Tyler and Alan Parry which seemed to be from the international feed of the time.

However, this deal expired in mid 2009 and was seemingly not renewed as for the next eighteen months the channel did not feature any sport produced by the BBC.

Therefore, sports such as rugby league, golf, athletics, darts and snooker were not shown on the channel nor were events such as domestic cricket prior to 1999 (the year that the BBC lost the rights to show live cricket), Wimbledon tennis, the Olympic Games and football coverage to which the BBC had the exclusive rights, which had included showings of 1970s and 1980s editions of Match of the Day under the title of "The Dead Good Match" with the opening and closing titles removed, and some editions were truncated, with only one of the matches covered in a particular programme being shown.

On 5 May 2012, ESPN Classic broadcast two live events - the final day of rugby union's Premiership league season and a football match from Serie A.

On 4 May 2013, ESPN Classic was used to provide coverage of a second game from the final set of league matches of the 2012–13 Aviva Premiership season.