MBC Sportsnet

MBC Sportsnet is a Magisterian pay television sports network owned by MBC Networks Group, a subsidiary of the VGC International Networks unit of Philippine media conglomerate VGC. The network is based in Calisota, Philadelphia.

History
The network was launched in 1994 as Prime Sports, under the ownership of Liberty Media Corporation, in line with its sister sports properties (including Prime Network in the US, Prime Sports in Asia, and Premier Sports in Australia). In 1995, News Corporation acquired 50% ownership in the Prime Network (which by then also included the newly-launched Prime Deportiva in Latin America), and a year later, changed its name to Fox Sports. In 1999, Fox Sports launched Fox Sports Plus, and in 2003, launched racing-oriented Speed Channel.

In 2012, presumably related to News Corp's corporate restructuring resulting from the 2011 News of the World phone hacking scandal, Fox Sports rebranded Fox Sports Plus to Fox Sports 2 and Speed to Fox Sports 3.

Sale to Disney, resale to VGC rebrand
On March 19, 2019, The Walt Disney Company acquired Fox Sports as part of its acquisition of parent company 21st Century Fox. However, a few days after the merger, a court ruling forced Disney to sell Fox Sports to an unrelated third-party company, citing Disney's ownership of the aforementioned ESPN. On June 22, 2019, regulatory agencies approved Disney's sale of the Fox Sports network to VGC International Networks, a unit of Philippine media conglomerate VGC. A clause with Fox Corporation (which kept the US Fox Sports properties) requires VGC to rebrand Fox Sports Magisteria within 5 years following the sale.

While VGC initially planned to rename the network under the VGC Sportsnet name, in February 2021, the company acquired most of the assets of the MBC Corporation, including the terrestrial MBC network and competing sports network Global Sports. The decision to allow VGC to keep Global Sports was seen by critics as hypocritical of their previous decision to force Disney to sell Fox Sports to VGC. As a result of the acquisition, Fox Sports was integrated with the MBC Sports unit and Global Sports, with Fox Sports being the senior network. Fox Sports was also restructured to be under the MBC Networks Group.

As a result of the MBC brand falling under VGC ownership, VGC instead announced that both Fox and Global are set to merge under the name MBC Sportsnet, adopting elements from the international VGC Sportsnet network. The rebranding was completed on January 3, 2022.