Sky Sports is the brand name for a group of sports-oriented television channels operated by the UK and Ireland's main satellite pay-TV company, British Sky Broadcasting. Sky Sports is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It has played a major role in the increased commercialisation of British sport since 1990, sometimes playing a large role in inducing organisational changes in the sports it broadcasts, most notably when it encouraged the Premier League to break away from the Football League in 1992.

Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, and 4 are available as a premium package on top of the basic Sky package. These channels are also available as premium on nearly every satellite, cable and IPTV broadcasting system in the UK and Ireland. Unlike the other channels, Sky Sports News is provided as part of basic packages. Sky Sports is perhaps best known for its Premier League football coverage.

Sky Sports originally began broadcasting of sports events as The Sports Channel on 25 March 1990, as part of the British Satellite Broadcasting service on cable, becoming available on the Marcopolo satellite (Marcopolo 1 11.93846) the following month.

Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton,MBE (born 7 January 1985) is a British Formula One racing driver from England, currently racing for the McLaren team. He is the 2008 Formula One World Champion.

Hamilton was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. In December 1995, at the age of ten, he approached McLaren team principal Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards ceremony and told him, "I want to race for you one day ... I want to race for McLaren." Less than three years later McLaren and Mercedes-Benz signed him to their Young Driver Support Programme. After winning the British Formula Renault, Formula Three Euroseries, and GP2 championships on his way up the racing career ladder, he drove for McLaren in 2007, making his Formula One debut 12 years after his initial encounter with Dennis. Lewis Hamilton's contract for the McLaren driver development program made him the youngest ever driver to secure a contract which later resulted in an F1 drive.

Coming from a mixed-race background, with a black father and white mother, Hamilton is often labelled "the first black driver in Formula One", although Willy T. Ribbs tested an F1 car in 1986. He is also the first driver of black heritage to win a major race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in any discipline.

Mark Alan Webber (born 27 August 1976) is an Australian Formula One driver.

After some racing success in Australia, Webber moved to the United Kingdom in 1995 to further his motorsport career. Webber began a partnership with fellow Australian Paul Stoddart, at that time owner of the European Racing Formula 3000 team, which eventually took them both into Formula One when Stoddart bought the Minardi team.

Webber made his Formula One debut in 2002, scoring Minardi's first points in three years at his and Stoddart's home race. After his first season, Jaguar Racing took him on as lead driver. During two years with the generally uncompetitive team, Webber qualified on the front two rows of the grid several times and outperformed his team mates. His first F1 win was with Red Bull Racing at the 2009 German Grand Prix, which followed second places at the 2009 Chinese, Turkish, and British Grands Prix. By the end of 2009, Webber had scored eight podiums, including another victory in Brazil. His eight podiums in 2009 compares to only two podiums in the first seven years of his career. He has since added ten more podiums in 2010, including victories in Spain, Monaco, Britain and Hungary. Webber finished the 2010 season in third place having led for a long period, losing out to teammate Sebastian Vettel in the final race of the season. Webber added another race victory in the 2011 Brazilian Grand Prix, as he once again finished third behind champion Vettel and runner-up Jenson Button. Webber again partners Vettel again in the 2012 season, his sixth with Red Bull.

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English film, television, radio and theatre actor. His most acclaimed roles include Stephen Hawking in the BBC drama Hawking (2004); William Pitt in the historical film Amazing Grace (2006); the protagonist Stephen Ezard in the miniseries thriller The Last Enemy (2008); Paul Marshall in Atonement (2007); Bernard in Small Island (2009); Sherlock Holmes in the modern BBC adaptation series Sherlock (2010); and Peter Guillam in the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011).

In February 2011, he began playing both Victor Frankenstein and his creature opposite Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle's stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The play had a three-month run at the National Theatre. In late 2011, he played Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011). The film received five BAFTA nominations and six Academy Award nominations, including the Best Picture nomination in 2012. He also played Peter Guillam, one of the pivotal roles in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), which was nominated for three Academy Awards and 11 BAFTA Awards. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was also nominated for Best Picture in 2012.

Bruno Senna Lalli (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈbrunu ˈsenɐ], born 15 October 1983 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian Formula One racing driver and the nephew of the late three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna. His mother is Ayrton's older sister, Viviane. His father, Flávio Lalli, died in a motorcycle crash in 1996. He wears a slightly modified version of his uncle's helmet. Senna made his Formula One début in 2010, driving for Hispania Racing. He moved to Renault in 2011, replacing Nick Heidfeld as a driver from August of that year, and since January 2012 he is signed to the Williams team.

As a child, Bruno raced go-karts against Ayrton on the family farm, and Ayrton regarded his nephew's potential very highly. When leaving McLaren at the end of 1993, Ayrton said: "If you think I'm fast, just wait until you see my nephew Bruno". Ayrton's death while driving a Williams at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, however, brought Bruno's own racing career to an abrupt halt.

At Imola in 2004, however, on the 10th anniversary of his uncle's death, Senna was given an example of his uncle's 1986 Lotus 98T as a gift from an Italian friend. Senna drove the car at the 2004 Formula One Brazilian Grand Prix meeting in São Paulo, at Interlagos, where Ayrton had won in 1991 and 1993.