A brief history of sport on Channel 4

From Saturday the BDO World Darts Championship will run for 9 days, however it will for the first time will not be going out on it's traditional home of the BBC but instead it will be going out on Channel 4. The BBC cut its ties with the BDO to save costs and cover the 2 day Champions League of Darts run by the rival body the PDC and Channel 4 replacing the Beeb for the BDO event.
Channel 4 covering Darts is a long way from the sports it covered when it started in 1982. For about a decade and a half brought to the British viewer sports not usually seen by the British viewer. American Football, Aussie Rules Football, Baseball. Basketball, Gaelic Football, Sumo Wrestling and that curiosity from India Kabaddi. There was also coverage of events like the Tour De France. And in the days when Channel 4 had close ties with ITV, they jointly covered the 1988 Summer Olympics.
In 1992 saw Channel 4 take it's first steps in the sporting mainstream. It started coverage of Italy's serue A Football League. This was prompted in part by the presence of English players David Plattt, Paul Ince and the most famous of them all, Paul Gascoigne. For the next 10 years during the course of the League season, a live match would be shown on a Sunday afternoon. Though by the end  Channel 4 showed matches infrequent before dropping it.
In 1998 Channel 4 did the unthinkable and snatched the rights to England's Test Cricket team home matches from the BBC. Despite the fury of Countdown fans angry that they favourite show being deplaced in the schedules, C4 gained praise and awards for it's coverage. However in a running theme Sky came brought the rights.
The sport that Channel 4 had the longest association with was Horse Racing. The peak came when from 2012 to 2016 it held a monopoly of Free to Air coverage that included big events including the Grand National. However with declining ratings for the big meetings the deal ended with ITV raking over.
Perhaps the most infamous chapter in Channel 4's sport coverage was when it brought the rights to cover the World Athletics Championships. For the 2011 event Gadget Show presenter Ortis Delay was chosen to anchor the coverage. But making a large number of gaffes he was replace midway through and the IAAF sold the rights back to the BBC.
Channel 4 has most recently started to cover the Formula 1 World Championship after the BBC (as with the BDO World Darts Championship) cut short it's contract to save costs. However in 2019 (yet again) Sky will have exclusive rights.
How long Channel 4 and the BDO will be together remains to be seen. However one thing that you can count is that Channel 4 will always make a surprise with what sports it covers.