Star Sports (India)
Indian television sports channel
The Star Sports Network is a group of Indian pay television sports channels owned by JioStar, a joint venture between Viacom18 and Disney India, The network currently holds rights of flagship tournaments like International Cricket Council events, Indian Premier League, Premier League, ONE Championship, Wimbledon etc.
The networks were initially formed in 1991 as a joint venture between Star TV and Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) known as Prime Sports, taking their name from TCI's U.S. regional sports networks of the same name. In 1996, Star agreed to merge its sports networks in Asia with those of its rival ESPN, forming ESPN Star Sports. In June 2012, News Corporation acquired ESPN's stake in the joint venture; its corporate successor 21st Century Fox was, in turn, acquired by ESPN's majority-owner the Walt Disney Company in 2019.
Star Sports is a major broadcaster of cricket in India, holding the pay television rights to domestic national team matches, the Indian Premier League, and International Cricket Council tournaments. Streaming rights to many Star Sports properties are held in India by sister streaming service JioHotstar.
01History
Hong Kong-based Star TV launched Prime Sports (later renamed Star Sports) in partnership with American company TCI, which owned Prime-branded regional sports channels. The channel was broadcast across Asia, including India, as with the footprint of AsiaSat 7. Star TV has since regionalized the channel with several versions. Later, ESPN joined the region as a competitor to Star Sports.
In October 1996, Star Sports announced an agreement to merge its operations with those of ESPN International in the region, forming a Singapore-based joint venture known as ESPN Star Sports.
In June 2012, it was announced that Star TV, by then owned by News Corporation, would acquire ESPN's share in ESPN Star Sports. The sale was completed in January 2013. On 11 March 2013, Star Sports 2, a Hindi-language sports channel, was launched as a sister channel to Star Sports, Star Cricket and ESPN.
On 6 November 2013, Star Sports introduced a new brand identity and re-aligned its channels in India; Star Sports became Star Sports 1; Star Cricket became Star Sports 3, a Hindi language channel; ESPN became Star Sports 4 and on 28 May 2017 Star Sports 4 became Star Sports 1 Tamil a Tamil language Sports channel, and Star Cricket HD and ESPN HD became Star Sports HD1 and HD2 respectively. In Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, the ESPN Star Sports channels were relaunched by Fox International Channels Asia Pacific as Fox Sports. ESPN International later established a partnership with Multi-Screen Media in October 2015, which rebranded Sony Kix as Sony ESPN in January 2016.
Star India planned to replace the troubled Channel V with Star Sports 1 Kannada on 16 November 2017, but the delay in regulatory approval meant the plan was postponed. Later, Star India replaced Channel V into the current iteration of Star Sports 3 on 15 September 2018, and launched Star Sports 1 Telugu and Star Sports 1 Kannada as new channels on 7 and 29 December 2018, respectively. In the meantime, Kannada commentary of Star Sports' coverage of the Indian Premier League was broadcast on Star Suvarna.
21st Century Fox was acquired by Disney on 19 March 2019, giving it ownership of Star Sports.
Ahead of the 2023 Indian Premier League, whose streaming rights would now be owned by JioCinema, Star Sports announced that it would launch feeds of Star Sports 1 Tamil and Telugu in HD on 15 March 2023. Concurrently, the Bangla and Marathi feeds were discontinued. In June 2023, in response to JioCinema's decision to stream every IPL 2023 match for free, Star Sports and Disney+ Hotstar announced that the 2023 Asia Cup and 2023 Men's Cricket World Cup would stream for free on mobile devices.
02Operating channels
On-air channels
| Channel | Launched | Language | Category | SD/HD | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Star Sports 1 | 1996 | English | National | SD+HD | |
| Star Sports 2 | 2013 | ||||
| Star Sports 3 | 2018 | SD | Replaced Channel V | ||
| Star Sports Select 1 | 2016 | SD+HD | |||
| Star Sports Select 2 | |||||
| Star Sports 1 Hindi | 2017 | Hindi | Formerly Star Cricket | ||
| Star Sports 2 Hindi | 2025 | Replaced Sports18 1 | |||
| Star Sports Khel | SD | Replaced Sports18 Khel | |||
| Star Sports 1 Tamil | 2017 | Tamil | Regional | SD+HD | |
| Star Sports 2 Tamil | 2025 | Replaced Sports18 3 | |||
| Star Sports 1 Telugu | 2018 | Telugu | |||
| Star Sports 2 Telugu | 2025 | Replaced Sports18 2 | |||
| Star Sports 1 Kannada | 2018 | Kannada | SD | ||
| Star Sports 2 Kannada | 2025 | Replaced Star Sports First |
Off-air channels
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Star Sports (India)”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Star Sports Network logo.png by Unknown author, Fair use
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