BRITISH SATELLITE broadcaster Sky Sports will this morning issue an on-air apology to Irish viewers who were charged for text messages that were never registered for competitions on three recent sports shows.

The Irish Timeshas learned that Sky will issue the apology during its popular Soccer Am show on Sky Sports 1 this morning.

Sky said the mistakes, which came to light during a recent internal audit, were due to “human error” and that refunds would be offered to all those affected.

UK broadcast regulator Ofcom has been informed of the overcharging.

The texts were charged at 35 cent each and the total refund will be €589. About 1,682 texts from Irish viewers were affected.

Sky, which has about 600,000 satellite subscribers in Ireland, said it had identified “procedural failures”, which meant that votes received by SMS from viewers here were not registered, but were still charged.

The shows affected were Cricket AM, broadcast on August 2nd, 2008, and two editions of Soccer AM, on December 13th last and January 3rd this year.

Sky said it did not financially benefit from the mistakes as the votes were not reported to the broadcaster by its third-party telecoms supplier.

“Sky is taking immediate action to ensure these mistakes are not repeated,” the company said.

“We are also working with the mobile phone networks to refund the cost of the texts directly back to affected viewers.”

Sky said the Irish votes would not have affected the final results of the competitions.