About Sport 3 (Israel)

Sport 3 (Israel)

Sport 3 is a Hebrew-language pay television sports channel in Israel, operated by Charlton Ltd of Tel Aviv. It is the third channel of the Charlton family and sits at channel 53 on HOT, yes, Cellcom TV and Partner TV. Sport 3 was launched in April 2017, a full decade after Sport 1 and Sport 2 had established Charlton's permanent subscription channels, and its arrival doubled the family's capacity at a stroke. The channel exists for a simple arithmetical reason: Charlton owned the Israeli rights to far more live football than two channels could broadcast, because the matches it owned overwhelmingly take place at the same times, on weekend afternoons and European midweek evenings. Sport 3, launched together with Sport 4 after years of regulatory argument and under conditions imposed by the Council for Cable and Satellite Broadcasting to protect existing subscribers, turned fixtures that previously went unshown into televised matches, and it has carried that overflow role — in the family's yellow on-screen identity — ever since.

The problem Sport 3 was created to solve

By the mid-2010s Charlton's rights portfolio, catalogued in Hebrew reference coverage, covered the Israeli Premier League, the English Premier League and its cups, the German, Italian, Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese, Argentine and Brazilian leagues, the UEFA Europa League, the Copa Libertadores and much more besides, plus basketball, handball, athletics and tennis. Rights, however, are only valuable if they can be shown, and football's calendar works against the broadcaster: league fixtures are deliberately scheduled together. Charlton's case to the regulator, as recorded in Hebrew Wikipedia's account, was that with only two broadcast slots it was prevented from giving viewers many of the matches whose rights it held, because most of them took place at adjacent hours at weekends. Matches it had paid for simply were not broadcast at all. The company asked the Council for Cable and Satellite Broadcasting for four additional channels — two regular and two in HD — arguing it could carry them without changing the package price. The request set off one of the longest regulatory fights in Israeli sports television.

Years of refusal, then a conditional yes

The regulator's first instinct was refusal. As Hebrew reference coverage records, the council initially rejected Charlton's application out of concern about a duopoly in sports broadcasting, in a market effectively divided between Charlton and the RGE Sports Channel group. Charlton pressed its capacity argument for years. When approval finally came in 2017, it was hedged with conditions that tell the story of Israeli sports-rights politics. Globes, which covered the process closely, reported that the council approved the two new channels on two terms: a Charlton commitment that the price of the two existing channels would not rise for a year, and a commitment that there would be no migration of content — no "leakage" of attractive fixtures from the veteran channels to the new ones that would force supporters to buy Sport 3 and Sport 4 in order to keep following their teams. Globes noted the scepticism in the market and inside the council itself: with fixtures clustered on Saturdays and the definition of a "central" match inherently fluid, Charlton would retain room to manoeuvre, and the no-migration condition was the real test of the whole move. The council, for its part, said it was negotiating the details and that unsatisfactory answers would mean the channels would not be approved.

April 2017: the launch

Sport 3 went on air in April 2017, in high definition from the start as Sport 3 HD, together with Sport 4 HD. The launch terms protected the installed base: Globes reported on 13 April 2017 that in the first stage the new channels would be available to Sport 1 and Sport 2 subscribers at no extra charge, and Charlton declined at the time to comment on the launch date or on which content would move to the new channels. The timing, at the climax of the European football season, made the capacity argument visible immediately: the run-in of the English, German and Italian leagues and the knockout rounds of the Europa League produce exactly the simultaneous fixtures that two channels cannot cover. Sport 3's first service to viewers was therefore not a new competition but completeness — weekends on which the third simultaneous match, previously discarded, now had a channel, a commentary team and a place in the guide at channel 53.

Charlton, the operator

Sport 3's operator, Charlton, is the Tel Aviv-based commercial broadcasting company owned by Eli Azur and Pini Zahavi, active in Israeli broadcasting since the late 1990s. The company began by renting airtime to show English and Italian football, won the Israeli Premier League tender at the end of 2003 and pioneered pay-per-view football in Israel with its Football Saturday channels, endured the public storm over its pricing of the 2006 World Cup — an initial 492-shekel asking price cut to 309 and then 189 shekels after a Knesset debate — and in 2007 received approval for Sport 1 and Sport 2 as permanent pay channels. The Sports Channel rivalry frames the whole story: Charlton's competitor operated the Sport 5 family, and the two groups' contest for rights defined Israeli sports television. By the time Sport 3 launched, Charlton had also begun producing its Israeli league broadcasts with ChyronHego graphics and TRACAB player tracking, technology installed in league stadiums from the 2016/17 season. Sport 3 inherited that production operation whole: it is not a bought-in feed but a channel produced by the same company, commentators and graphics systems as its elder siblings.

What Sport 3 broadcasts

Sport 3 draws on the shared Charlton portfolio rather than holding exclusive rights of its own, and its schedule is the family's third simultaneous helping of the same menu. In football, that portfolio spans the Israeli Premier League and Toto Cup, the English Premier League, Championship and cups, the German Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal, Italy's Serie A and Coppa Italia, Spain's Copa del Rey, France's Coupe de France, the Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese, Turkish, Argentine and Brazilian leagues, the UEFA Europa League and Conference League, the Copa Libertadores and Major League Soccer. The family's basketball coverage includes the Spanish, Greek, Italian and Turkish leagues and the EuroCup; its other sports include German handball and the handball Champions League, Diamond League athletics and ATP Masters 1000 tennis. Trade-press announcements illustrate the breadth that lands on the third channel: when Charlton agreed in February 2021 to broadcast the Extreme E electric racing series in Hebrew, the deal covered Sport 1, Sport 2, Sport 3 and Sport 4 alike, plus the sport.co.il digital platform. Sport 3's editorial identity is thus simultaneity itself — it is where the family's depth is proven on the crowded Saturdays and Thursdays when one or two channels are not enough.

Position, platforms and the yellow identity

Sport 3 is carried at channel 53 — directly after Sport 1 at 51 and Sport 2 at 52 — on HOT, yes, Cellcom TV and Partner TV, and through the NEXT TV and STING services, in 1080i high definition. Its platform history differs slightly from its elders': it launched onto HOT and yes in 2017, the year Charlton's channels also joined the new STINGTV service in October, and it was part of the package when Partner TV added Charlton in March 2021. On 1 January 2020 Charlton relaunched the family's graphics with a colour for each channel: green for Sport 1, red for Sport 2, yellow for Sport 3 and light blue for Sport 4, dropping the HD suffix from the logos. The yellow identity marks Sport 3 in programme guides and in the combined coverage programmes, such as the live European celebration format that stitches together the night's Europa League matches across the family's channels, in which Sport 3's fixture is one strand of a single evening's viewing. Number, colour and position together make the third channel findable in the seconds before kick-off, which is when its audience arrives.

The argument around the channel

Sport 3's approval triggered one of the fiercest media rows of its decade, and the row is part of the channel's verified history. Globes reported that the plan for the new channels ignited an open war between Charlton and ONE, the rival sports media group associated with the Moses family: ONE campaigned on its website and its 102FM radio programme, led by presenter Ofira Asayag, against the new pay channels, calling on viewers to disconnect from yes and HOT and warning of unprecedented package price rises, while Charlton responded with two defamation suits, for eight million and four million shekels. The dispute was about more than two channels — Azur's expansion in print, including the purchase of Maariv, had already cooled relations between the groups — but Sport 3 and Sport 4 were its casus belli, because each new premium channel shifted money and power in Israeli sport. That a third overflow channel could provoke a broadcasting war measures how completely Israeli football viewing had migrated into the paid packages Charlton and its rivals operated.

Sport 3 in the family today

The family has continued to evolve around Sport 3. In September 2023 Charlton opened two mobile-only TOGO channels for Israeli Premier League viewing after a long public argument about blocked mobile streaming; on 1 January 2026 those channels closed as the main channels became available on mobile devices, and a new channel, Sport 6, launched at channel 64. None of this altered Sport 3's settled role. It remains the third channel of five, the yellow channel at position 53 on every major Israeli platform, born of a decade-long argument about how much football one broadcaster can be made to show. Its creation doubled Israeli viewers' access to the matches their subscriptions had already bought the rights to, under regulatory conditions — price protection and a ban on content migration — that were written into its approval and that remain the clearest example in Israeli television of a channel designed as much by its regulator as by its owner.