MUMBAI: ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has reached a multi-year broadcast rights agreement for coverage of the Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL).

In addition to India, ESS will also air SLPL in other markets like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Sri Lanka becomes the 6th cricket body with whom ESS is working on the shortest form of the game. ESS already has the rights to existing T20 leagues from Australia (Big Bash League), England (Pro T20), Bangladesh (Bangladesh Premier League), CLT20 and ICC WT20. The IPL, the most-watched and lucrative T20 format, however, is with Multi Screen Media (earlier known as Sony Entertainment Television India).

The multi-year deal includes a minimum of 24 T20 matches per season. Star Cricket, Star Sports and ESPN will broadcast all the matches from 11 August.

The first edition of the SLPL will see seven provisional teams compete for the trophy as well as a qualifier berth to the Champions League Twenty20 (CLT20) to be held later this year.

ESS MD Peter Hutton said, "We are delighted to be able to telecast the live matches of the SLPL in India and throughout the region. It is an excellent addition to Star Cricket?s remarkable catalogue of content in the next year, headlined by India?s home series against Pakistan, England and New Zealand, the ICC World T20, the Champions League T20 and the ICC Champions trophy. We look to further growing our live cricket content."

The SLPL will feature 42 international players participating from seven countries including Australia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Africa and West Indies. However, Indian players won?t participate in SLPL following Indian cricket board?s decision not to allow its players to take part in the league.

MUMBAI: With two weeks to go before the start of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has lined up its team of presenters and reporters as well as special shows.

The Olympic studio presentation team will include Vijay Amritraj, Alan Wilkins and Mayanti Langer. They will be supported by Steve Dawson and Jason De La Pena.

In London, the team of dedicated reporters will be on-ground at the Games to deliver news updates, interviews and stories. The team will include Christy Simson, Paula Malai Ali, Sanjeev Palar and Jatin Sapru.

ESPN will be more India specific and showcase sports featuring Indian athletes, and those sports which are more popular in India such as Hockey, Shooting, Boxing, Wresting, Tennis and football. Star Sports will focus its coverage on international top athletes and events beyond the Asia contingent.

Moreover, the broadcaster will have a special show ?SportsCenter Espresso?. This will give viewers the chance to start their day with a fast-paced round-up of Olympics action.

SportsCenter Espresso will feature top Games highlights, exclusive athlete interviews, comprehensive on-ground coverage, and will showcase the key events to come later that day. In South Asia, SportsCenter Espresso will air at 7 am, 8 am and 12 pm.

There will also be a daily ?Primetime Update that will give viewers a complete snapshot of the day?s top Olympic news and preview the evening?s coverage. Primetime Update will air at 9 pm in South Asia.

ESS has been focussing on building up the Olympics since December. As the run-up to the Olympic Games, it showcased archive programming chronicling the last two decades of the Olympic Games moments and dramatic stories from over 30,000 hours of historical footage.

ESS is currently showcasing six original shows per week in the lead-up to the start of the Olympics. One of the shows on air is ?Living the Dream? that focusses on Asian and Indian athletes.

MUMBAI: For a year that has lighter load of marquee cricket and ad revenue forecast lower than 2011, the first six months have been unusually hectic and dramatic. Star took independent charge of sports broadcasting after News Corp bought out Disney?s stake in ESPN Star Sports, ending a 16-year-old joint venture company in Asia where both the media conglomerates held equal stake. Multi Screen Media (MSM) launched its maiden sports channel ?Six? while Zee introduced India?s first golf channel at a monthly price of Rs 200 a subscriber. Neo walked out of cricket and rebranded Neo Cricket as Neo Prime.

Beyond cricket, broadcasters have tapped into other sports with Neo debuting its hockey league in partnership with Indian Hockey Federation. The first six months, however, have not been easy for sporting leagues.

Cricket?s hottest property got its first reality check after the initial years of hype. The Indian Premier League (IPL) scored lower ratings and earned less advertising revenues than last year, though they are significantly higher than any other cricketing property in the Indian marketplace. Market estimates peg the sports broadcasting ad revenue at Rs 8.5-9 billion in the first six months of the year. With comparatively weaker ad revenue potential for the remaining six months, the early year forecast of ad revenue touching Rs 17 billion in 2012 is highly unlikely.

Star, left free from Disney, will start its aggressive play in sports broadcasting in India. It has already bagged the six-year BCCI rights till 2018 for a whopping Rs 38.51 billion, translating into Rs 401.154 million per match, much higher than what Nimbus had to pay (Rs 312.50 million a match). This squeezed out MSM who had bid Rs 37 billion.

MSM?s ?Six? will fight in the sports broadcasting arena with Ultimate Fighting Championship as its prime property till it telecasts the IPL next year.

With four sports broadcasting companies in the fray, Zee-controlled Ten Sports has renewed the rights for two cricket boards. Cricket South Africa (CSA) rights has come for $180 million and Zimbabwe for $20 million (both for eight years). The task will be to get the other three cricket boards ? Sri Lanka, Pakistan and West Indies.

Zee is also looking at a varied sports channel offering. Ten Golf, positioned premium, is looking at mopping up 500,000 subscribers in three years. Says Zee business head Sports Atul Pande, "There will be a move towards segmentation. We want to be the number one channel in Golf in South Asia."

The exit of cricket has meant that Neo would put its focus on sports like soccer, hockey and tennis. Neo had to also rework on its three-year distribution deal (from 1 September 2010) with TheOneAlliance aborting it and opting for a fresh pact valid for one year.

 LodestarUN COO Anamika Mehta believes that it will be difficult for Neo, whicht was built on the back of India cricket, to scale up. "India is dominated by cricket. While acquisition costs of other sports are low, the revenue is also low as there is only so much attention that other sports will get from advertisers. The channels will also be event centric. There are a limited number of non cricket sporting events that get traction. The Indian cricket team on the other hand plays for around 200 days in the year," she says.

Nimbus kick-started the World Series Hockey (WSH) while Hockey India has announced another league, the first edition of which will take place next year.

According to Hockey India secretary general Narinder Batra, the FIH has given clearance for one month next year during which no international event will be held. "This has been done so that top players like Jamie Dwyer and Teun de Nooijer are free from any international engagements."

Mehta believes the existence of two hockey league tournaments will result in fragmentation. "Even one league will find the going difficult. This is a long term play but the start has not been encouraging. For hockey to be brought back, efforts have to be made at the grassroots level. Then only can the interest levels grow. Leagues in different sports are obviously buoyed by the success of the IPL. But it will not be easy for them as it was for the IPL as there is a lack of familiarity in India for some of these sports," she says.

The leagues in other sports is yet to make an impact. In soccer, the i-League clubs are not happy with the way IMG Reliance, the AIFF?s commercial partner, is managing it as it has yet to come out with a blueprint for its development. The different clubs have, thus, formed the ?i-League Professional Football Clubs Association?.

"Every good league in the world is a separate entity in which the clubs are the stakeholders. We want to improve the standard of football in India and we are ready to do everything from our end as well", says the organisation?s general secretary Chirag Tanna.

The ambitious motorsports league that was planned by Machdar Motrosports has been postponed till next year. The i1 Super Series league has been rescheduled to 2013 as the venue in Delhi was not available.

The Elite Football League of India (EFLI), which aims to bring American football to India, has been preponed and will take place this month in Sri Lanka. It has teams from India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

So which other sport outside cricket is growing in India? ?Soccer is growing among the youth. The Euro 2012 did well this year,? points out Mehta.

The Olympics is expected to fare better this year compared to its earlier edition of 2008. "It will fare better this year. There are two reasons for this. The first is that unlike Doordarshan, ESPN Star Sports will be airing it. So there will be a concerted marketing push and the broadcast will be more professionally managed. The other reason is that there are more sports where India can win medals in. You have sports like boxing, wrestling, shooting and badminton, although tennis could be a disaster. It is not like the old days where the only medal hope was in hockey. I expect a big spike in ratings on those days when India wins a medal," says Mehta.

How big the impact of economic slowdown be on the sports genre? Says Mehta, ?There is a mood of caution but it is not a doomsday scenario. Some sectors like financial services and auto will cut back. If you look at the IPL, consumer durables did not come back in a big way.?

MUMBAI: ESPN International has entered into a cricket distribution agreement with ESPN Star Sports (ESS) for International Cricket Council (ICC) events and the Champions League Twenty20 for the Caribbean market, ESPN Caribbean and Maritime Media vice president Bernard Stewart announced.

The development comes in the wake of ESPN exiting the Asian market after selling its stake to News Corp in the Asian sports broadcasting joint venture ESPN Star Sports. Post the clearance of the stake sale, ESPN will be present in Asia through its digital media products.

The ICC agreement is a four-year deal from 2012 to 2015 and covers several ICC events, including the global showpiece of the cricket calendar, the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

The distribution agreement covers terrestrial, cable, satellite and new media platform rights. ICC programming will be presented on two ESPN Caribbean television networks--ESPN Caribbean and ESPN 2 Caribbean-- and on ESPNPlay.com, the region?s recently launched broadband network for live sports programming.

The Champions League Twenty20 agreement extends ESPN?s current three-year deal by three more years covering 2013-2015. The agreement covers all of ESPN Caribbean?s media platforms including the two networks, ESPN Caribbean and ESPN 2 Caribbean, and ESPNPlay.com.

?We are delighted to again showcase talented cricketers from the West Indies who will play in the ICC World Twenty20 and the Champions League Twenty20 later this year, as well as the crown jewel of cricket ? the ICC Cricket World Cup ? in 2015,? Stewart said. ?Cricket is essential to our programming in the West Indies and has a dynamic following there. This long-term agreement reinforces our commitment to providing world-class cricket to Caribbean fans.?

ESPN Caribbean?s upcoming cricket coverage includes the ICC Under 19 Cricket World Cup in Tony Ireland Stadium, Townsville, Australia from 10-25 August; the ICC World Twenty 20 in Sri Lanka from 18 September-7 October; and the Champions League Twenty20 in October.

The Champions League Twenty20 brings the best club teams from top cricket playing nations, including the West Indies, Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa, together in one of the major cricket competitions worldwide. Organisers have announced that Pakistan and other nations will be added this year.

The winner of the Caribbean Twenty20 ? to which ESPN Caribbean holds the rights through 2013 ? will represent the West Indies in the CLT20. Trinidad and Tobago, the 2011 representative, will return this year.

?We have succeeded in securing some very significant long-term broadcast partnerships for the ICC events and we are very pleased to be working with ESPN to showcase an exciting calendar of ICC cricket events in this cricket market,? said ESS SVP corporate development & cricket rights Anurag Dahiya.

MUMBAI: Rupert Murdoch?s News Corp. is busy creating a global sports broadcasting powerhouse. Soon after buying out ESPN?s stake in Asian sports broadcasting joint venture ESPN Star Sports, it has now gobbled up James Packer?s stake in Fox Sports.

News Corp. has made a $1.99 billion bid for a complete takeover of Australian billionaire Packer?s Consolidated Media Holdings, which holds 50 per cent of Fox Sports and 25 per cent of Foxtel.

The proposal, subject to regulatory approvals from Australian authorities, will give News Corp?s Australian subsidiary News Limited a complete ownership of Fox Sports with a 50 per cent stake in pay TV operator Foxtel.

Foxtel is half owned by Australian telecom and media company Telstra Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch?s News Corporation and Consolidated Media each holding a 25 per cent stake. Fox Sports is an equal joint venture partnership between Consolidated Media and News Corp.

Packer, son of late Kerry Packer, executive chairman of Consolidated Media?s largest shareholder, said: "CPH welcomes News? proposal and looks forward to CMH and News working together to address the detailed terms and conditions. Subject to this CPH, considering the offer price of $3.50 per share to be fair, will support the Proposal in the absence of a superior cash offer."

The deal will give Packer the capital to build war chest for his capital intensive casino business. He owns stakes in casinos in Australia, London, Macau and Las Vegas.

News Corp also has big plans for the US market where it is planning to launch a national sports network on cable television to take on Walt Disney-owned network ESPN, the dominant player in that market.

The company is considering converting its action-sports network Fuel to the new channel that would compete not just with ESPN but also with NBC?s and CBS?s sports networks.

In Asia, it has already become the dominant pay TV operator with the acquisition of ESPN?s stake in ESS.

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