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Asked about the formal launch of Zee Sports, Modi, while admitting
that fine-tuning of the project is on, indicated that by early June
the sports channel should be on air in its full-fledged avatar,
if not earlier in May.
Though the 24-hour sports channel will be encrypted, it is still
not clear whether it would be available to cable operators in a
free-to-air mode or as a pay channel. The process of seeding the
market with boxes would gain momentum in about 10 days time. In
the initial phase, the bigger and more urban-centric cities would
be targeted through cable networks and Dish TV’s DTH service.
As far as programming is concerned, Zee Sports --- whose executives
these days are huddled in a series of meetings in Delhi discussing
various aspects of launching a sports channel --- is aiming to showcase
hot sporting properties from the fields of soccer, motor sports
and tennis.
As far as available properties in these three areas are concerned,
however, there is very little to go around as of now, information
available with indiantelevision.com indicates. In soccer, there
are the Dutch, French and Indian football leagues; in motor sports
there is the A1 series and in tennis are the Tennis Masters, ATP
and WTA events.
There are two high value properties that will reportedly become
available for bidding in the course of this year though. These are
Champions League soccer and Formula One (F1) in motor sports. Both
of these A-list events are currently with ESPN Star Sports.
F1 becomes available from November while ESS' deal on Champions
League runs till the finals of this year's tournament, which is
to be played in Istanbul, Turkey, on 25 May. But what needs noting
here is that even if Zee Sports were to make a strong play for these
two properties, it would only be in the 2006 season that it could
look to showcase the events.
Cricket would have been a natural choice to drive a sports channel
in India, but most cricketing properties’ Indian sub-continent rights
have already been snapped up by existing major sports broadcasters
like ESPN Star Sports, Sony Entertainment Television India and Ten
Sports. In recent times, home series have been telecast on pubcaster
Doordarshan owing to continuing telecast imbroglio and pending court
cases.
Earlier talking to Indiantelevision.com, Chandra had said
that the sports channel would require a working capital of approximately
Rs 2 billion. There were also talks of forming a joint venture with
an Indian media company for the purpose.
Time Warner, which has an existing 26:74 per cent distribution
joint venture with Zee Telefilms, had also expressed willingness
to partner in the sports channel venture last year. Zee is understood
to have kept the proposal under active consideration.
Also Read:
Zee Sports looking at April
- May launch
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Zee
Sports, which began running test signals from midnight Sunday, is
poised for a formal launch May end-July beginning. It would be an
encrypted channel beaming off the PAS-10 satellite.