MUMBAI: Following the success of its three Asian versions of the news show SportsCenter , ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has now introduced a fourth edition. This would be in Cantonese for viewers in Hong Kong.

The other versions are SportsCenter India, SportsCenter Taiwan and SportsCenter Asia for South East Asia. The latest version of SportsCenter will be broadcast on ESPN Hong Kong. The channel, together with Star Sports Hong Kong, had been launched on 17 August 2004 on PCCW's now Broadband TV platform. now Broadband TV has an exclusive multi-year agreement for the distribution of ESS in Hong Kong.

ESS MD Rik Dovey said, "This is another milestone for ESPN Star Sports in Asia. September 2004 marks four years since we began delivering our show to the region. To this day, SportsCenter remains one of our biggest initiatives and reflects the company's investment in high-quality long-term sports programming.

"I am confident the localisation of this success-proven programme will serve Hong Kong well. In addition to having footage from more events than any of our competition, we also have first-class local presenters and producers delivering sports news at a level previously unavailable in this market.

"Elsewhere in Asia, SportsCenter is already the most popular sports news programme among cable subscribers and we expect SportsCenter Hong Kong to mirror this success."

SportsCenter Hong Kong will air Mondays to Fridays at 8 pm and 11:30 pm Hong Kong time. Radio bulletins of the award-winning news programme are also heard in Taiwan and Singapore. With the addition of SportsCenter Hong Kong, the worldwide SportsCenter franchise now includes nine locally produced versions, with transmissions in Cantonese, English, Mandarin, Portugese and Spanish, serving Asia, North America and Latin America.