Empire Sports Network launched on December 31, 1990; its first broadcast that evening was a National Hockey League game between the Buffalo Sabres and the Philadelphia Flyers.

Founded by John Rigas (founder and chief executive officer of network parent Adelphia Communications), the idea for Empire Sports was first conceived in 1989; Rigas decided to operate the new network in Buffalo, instead of in Adelphia's corporate homebase of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, a rural borough dozens of miles away from the nearest major sports teams.

Adelphia launched the network without seeking a specified carriage fee rate, offering Empire Sports to cable providers for free on a "good faith" basis.

However, in June 1991, Tele-Communications Inc. briefly dropped the network from its systems in New York state, after TCI decided against carrying it without a firm carriage agreement.

[1] Between October 2000 and March 2004, Adelphia, under vice president/general manager Bob Koshinski, used staff from Empire to operate Wethersfield radio station WNSA (107.7 FM).

Empire Sports thrived until March 2002, when the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating accusations of internal corruption and securities violations by Adelphia executives (including John Rigas and his son, chief operating officer Timothy Rigas), leading up to the company's subsequent bankruptcy filing, as Adelphia was mired in off-balance-sheet debt totaling $2.3 billion.

[5] With Adelphia in freefall and under temporary bank-appointed management, Empire was unable to renew its carriage agreement with Time Warner Cable, its largest non-Adelphia customer and the primary cable provider for nearly all of upstate New York, in the fall of 2002; TWC continued to carry Empire on its Syracuse system for eight months without a carriage deal in place, later announcing plans to replace it with the Outdoor Life Network on May 1, 2003.

The staff cuts forced Empire to immediately eliminate the popular news/call-in show Fan TV,[9][10] but the network itself was still able to survive for another eighteen months.

Empire signed off for good on March 7, 2005, with Adelphia replacing it on its former analog channel slot on its Western New York systems with the NFL Network.

Empire's Web site remained live but abandoned for 13 years after the network's closure, in part to prevent a fake news website of the same name from claiming the domain.

Empire also aired NBA games featuring the Toronto Raptors for several seasons until January 2005, when all original and live programming on the network was discontinued.

In its latter years, the network also aired live Canadian Football League games on Friday nights and tape delayed telecasts on Saturday mornings.