Eurosport owner Discovery has reached an 11th-hour deal with Sky for its channels to remain on the service.

The broadcaster's portfolio of channels, which include Eurosport, Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet, had been due to disappear for Sky customers at midnight tonight after the parties failed to reach a new carriage agreement.

Discovery had been seeking an increase in payments from Sky in exchange for providing its channels, but the satellite operator had refused to bow to their demands.

In a statement this evening, however, Discovery confirmed that the parties have now reached a new multi-year agreement.

"We want to thank our millions of viewers and fans for their overwhelming support over the last few days", said Susanna Dinnage, MD of Discovery Networks UK. "We have reached a new agreement that guarantees Sky's customers access to Discovery's wide range of channels and programmes for years to come."

Sky later claimed that Discovery had "accepted the proposal we gave them over a week ago", but a Discovery spokesperson said: "The deal we reached with Sky is meaningfully better than our former agreement and their proposal. Furthermore, our new arrangement enables us to control our destiny in more ways, with even more opportunities to invest and launch channels and consumer services. Stay tuned in the coming weeks."