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- ABS-CBN Sports was a sports division of the Philippine media conglomerate ABS-CBN, which aired some of the notable sporting events in the Philippines. ABS-CBN Sports began in 1998 as the main broadcaster for the network-backed basketball league Metropolitan Basketball Association which introduced the home-and-away play format in the Philippine basketball landscape. Simultaneous with that (shortly before the MBA collapsed), it acquired the broadcast rights to the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) and National Collegiate Athletic Association (Philippines) (NCAA) collegiate basketball leagues, which bolstered Studio 23's ratings and at the same time aligned further toward the said channel's programming thrust to the youth. ABS-CBN Sports also supplant contents to their sports channel S+A aired on UHF Channel 23 (main channel) and SkyCable Channel 166 (HD channel). The division also maintains their official website, sports.abs-cbn.com, one of the top sports news websites in the Philippines. On July 15, 2020, ABS-CBN Corporation announced that its sports division will cease its operations on August 31, 2020, following the cease-and-desist order issued by the National Telecommunications Commission due to the expiration of ABS-CBN's legislative franchise to operate and its denial of a new franchise by the House of Representatives. Following the closure, several sports rights including UAAP and the PVL were transferred to One Sports, while NCAA was transferred to GMA Network. Despite the closure, ABS-CBN remains the broadcast partner of the MPBL through A2Z Channel 11, as of March 2021. (en)
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