With so many channel wars, how does ESPN-Star Sports make a place for itself in cricket?
ESPN-Star Sports has live and exclusive telecast rights for six out of the 10 test playing nations in the world. And don’t forget the Indian viewers who are hooked on to cricket watch matches played anywhere in the world. The recent Ashes series played in England had a reach of 36 million individuals across India. Again, during Bangladesh’s run chase against Australia, ESPN registered a channel share of 8.1 TVR, way ahead of other channels including Star with 6.9, Sony with 5.7 and Zee with 4.6. So you see, even Australia-Bangladesh cricket sells! What are the other events which the network is popularising through local content? We recently had commentary in Tamil for the viewers in Tamil Nadu for the F1 racing. We realised that even people in rural areas would like to know how Narain Karthikeyan was performing. ESPN tied up with a number of cable operators in Tamil Nadu to facilitate the commentary in Tamil and it was a big success with the average rating growing over 200 per cent. Si
