Today, as has been the case sporadically over the past few months, Motors TV again disappeared from Sky’s television platform. However, on this occasion, the channel also went offline for Virgin Media viewers.
A reputable insider on Digital Spy Forum has since posted about it, stating that the channel was put into receivership five weeks ago by a French court (Motors TV is a French company).
Verif.com allows the public to browse basic details for individual companies, a bit like Companies House in the UK. The record for Motors TV shows that a court decision was taken on May 31st, 2016, i.e. five weeks ago. The court decision is known as a “backup procedure”. The procedure suspends the payment of debts for those businesses, such as Motors TV, who are in money difficulty.
The benefit of a “backup procedure” is that the company can be reorganised so that creditors can be paid. In essence, reading between the lines, “backup procedure” is the French term for “receivership”. It therefore seems likely that Sky and Virgin Media, and whoever else, have not been paid (yet) and have taken Motors TV off their respective EPG slots for the moment until they have been paid.
The court judgment, issued on June 10th, 2016, can be found here. The judgment does mention appointing administrators and also receivership, by stating “Receivables are to declare, within two months of this publication, to the Judicial Agent or the web portal at <weblink>”
Based on the information in the public domain, the picture looks bleak…
Update on July 8th – Motors TV is back on the EPG so it is here, for now.
Motorsport Broadcasting 
Its ashame to lose Motors TV, such a great channel for motorsport fans.
It will be very interesting to see where their motorsport rights switch to now. Especially the more high profile series like WEC and Blancpain. Makes you wonder if Sky will try and bolster up their F1 channel or will BT Sport continue their big commitment to motorsport!
Its not long until the 6hrs of Nurburgring, with no live UK coverage at the moment.
What would be a real shame is the loss of club racing off the telly. It is fun to watch, and provides at least a small incentive for sponsorship on a small scale.-
The loss of a Motorsport only channel sucks big time, I know BT Sports have the odd slot as does Eurosports, but the rest of the time their normally just full of ball sports, which do not interest me in the least…
Fingers crossed that something or someone will come to the rescue…
Motors is the best channel on sky ,spend most of my time watching it suffer the rest of the channels till some good motor sport comes on. Get it back now !!
No more V8 Supercars. Motorsport tely will never be the same. Pure entertainment from Oz. Sky can stick F1, so boring. Spend some of the Millions Sky makes from F1 &football to give Motors TV a break. Get it back on.
Best channel on tv has gone. Let’s hope some company will do something to bring it back
What a shame if grass roots racing doesn’t have an opportunity to be broadcast to a wider audience.
I do hope Motors TV can be saved, petrol head heaven, V8 supercars always brilliant to watch, not forgetting the coverage of the lower formulas as well, fun cup, karting etc.
Devastated, only place you can watch full motocross coverage. I can see myself cancelling my sky as with the loss of motors tv and the extreme channel, there’s not alot else on there for me. At least Eurosport is still covering a bit of motocross. Anyone know if you can watch motors tv online.
Some of the club series are available on the digitex site at http://www.digitexvideo.co.uk/webtv
Hopefully they’ll look into expanding that. I wouldn’t be adverse to paying to watch the series I’m interested in.
They’d just run a fantastic show on Morgan cars, such a pity, I would have loved to see more like that.
It’s back on the Sky EPG now.
In my entirely naive and unbusinesslike way, I’m having difficulty with the concept of MotorsTV having to pay Sky and Virgin to air their product. I’d have thought the TV companies would be buying the content from MotorsTV.
What’s in it for V & S in that case? The advertising money goes to Motors. With a really high profile channel with shows that lots of people want to watch they might do it free as it gets them more subscribers but how many people subscribe to S & V for Motors TV alone?
Hmm. I see your point. Cheers.