Connecticut, USA. Up until the 2011–12 NHL season, ESPN America held the rights to live and delayed NHL matches as well as round-up programming such as NHL On The Fly, however these rights were not renewed for the UK, Ireland & the Nordic countries and are now held by different networks across Europe. However, they still hold the rights for other countries throughout continental Europe, such as Germany. ESPN America acquired the American Hockey League, a minor North American Hockey League broadcast rights as a replacement for the UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries. In April 2012, SportsCenter moved from five to seven days a week with a new start time of 8am UK/9am CET. At this point, ESPN stopped producing a local version of SportsCenter, opting instead to broadcast an edited version of the 2am ET show from Los Angeles, cut to fit 45 minutes through removing commercial breaks and stories on European sports such as soccer. This show is then repeated at 8.45am, 4pm & 4.45pm (UK time). Sale to ESPN In late 2006, former owners Benchmark Capital Europe and Setanta Sports agreed to sell the network to ESPN for €70m. The sale was completed in March 2007 but the network continued to be part of the Setanta Sports Pack on satellite television until June 2009 when Setanta UK went into administration. The network became known as ESPN America on 1 February 2009 to coincide with Super Bowl XLIII. The channel continued to provide the same lineup of North American sports programming. ESPN America HD On 1 March 2010, the Nordic Canal Digital launched an HD version of ESPN America. The channel launched in the UK on the Sky platform on 21 June 2010. It was launched in Portugal on ZON Multimédia's cable platform on 24 November 2010 and later on MEO (Portugal)'s cable platform on 15 July 2011. In Germany, the Channel started airing over the Sky Germany platform on 27 October 2010. In Italy, the HD channel was launched on 1 February 2012. Sale to BT Group and subsequent closure On 25 February 2013, BT Group agreed to acquire ESPN's UK and Ireland TV channels business, consisting of ESPN and ESPN America, the value of the deal was not disclosed, but BT is understood to have paid "low tens of millions". At midnight on 1 August 2013 the channel ceased its operations in all Europe, Middle