in 1997 sports vision ran into financial difficulty; sports australia struggled to get viewers due to the limited reach of the optus cable, and aggressive marketing of the fox sports service by foxtel. the company eventually collapsed, but the seven network bought the channels and relaunched them on 1 march 1999 under the c7 sport brand. sports australia became "c7 gold", or "c7 twelve", after its channel assignment on optus. sports australia 2 became "c7 blue", or "c7 thirteen". sports afl's programming was carried on the other two channels.