NEW DELHI: A Supreme Court verdict delivered today on cricket rights issue may have effected a body blow to the Subhash Chandra-promoted Zee Telefilms, but that is not stopping the company from going ahead with its plans of launching a sports channel.

According to Zee Telefilms, Zee Sports- as the channel has been christened after a market research, is set to beam on various sports genre programming into the cable and satellite homes from the “second quarter of 2005.”

Pointing out that Zee Sports would offer top-of-the-line national and international sporting activities on the sports channel, Essel group spokesperson Ashish Kaul said, “The company’s philosophy is to be ready for all eventuality and keeping that in mind, we are looking at launching Zee Sports in the second quarter this year.”

Earlier, Chandra had said that the sports channel would require a working capital of Rs 2 billion (Rs 200 crore). 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, too had expressed willingness to partner in the sports channel venture last year. Zee is understood to have kept the proposal under active consideration.