ESPN Star Sports recently signed its first-ever terrestrial carriage deals in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar with national broadcasters LNTV, TV5 and Mywaddy TV.

The deals will run for three years and include an agreement to air the English Premier League and other sports programmes. ESS has also concluded a carriage agreement with Vietnam's terrestrial national network, VTV3. Under this arrangement, VTV3 will broadcast, in addition to the English Premier League, exclusive ESS programs like the Asian X Games Qualifier in Malaysia in February 2002, the US X Games, the world's richest 5-a-side international football event Tiger 5s, and the CGU Asian Bowling Tour.

ESS programming was earlier available in the region through a combination of hotel and cable platforms, mainly to expatriates and tourists.

The EPL season began on August 18 2001, carried live on ESS' two channels, ESPN and Star Sports. This season, football fans across Asia will see 165 live games and over 1000 hours of EPL programming. In addition, there is a line-up of support news programming seven days a week, with a comprehensive menu of pre- and post-game analyses, predictions and information.

According to an official release, a potential 9.2 million viewers have been added to ESS's distribution figures, taking it up to a total of 79 million households on ESPN and 56 million households on Star Sports.