[interestednovice]

Which will be pretty much a decade to the day from when BT Sport inherited ESPN UK and its content. I’ll be honest the ESPN/BT Sport 4 channel is the one I watch the least, but it seemed to have stuck true to its original values of US sports from its schedules. Shame to see it go in that regard. 

I noticed they were on screen animations for TNT Sports during the Conference League Final itself last night, I would expect to see more of this come Saturday night.

Yes, it will be 10 years to the day. Clearly it’s no coincidence that Discovery has planned the timing for this rebrand in such a way - they obviously decided not to renew the ESPN deal, and are then ditching the BT name at the same time as the bouquet of channels “evolves”.

BT Sport has very much been a continuation of ESPN’s service, as you say. Even using the name BT Sport // ESPN back in the early days, right through to simulcasting content from ESPN US on occasion to this day.

There was a similar adjustment 10 years ago, don’t forget, as ESPN America and ESPN Classic were axed. Really, content from ESPN itself became part of the BT Sport numbered channels, ESPN America became BT Sport ESPN and only ESPN Classic was “lost”. This time, potentially much more content will be lost. But that fits with Discovery’s cost-cutting approach.