STAR
Why did STAR India bid (and win) and not ESPN STAR Sports, the JV between STAR and Disney-owned ESPN? “ESPN Star Sports (ESS), the 18-year-old sports broadcasting joint venture between ESPN International and News Corp, is under review for a possible operational split of its Indian business. The move aims to boost the Indian footprint ESPN’s parent Walt Disney and give flexibility to both parties to pursue expansion in India’s booming pay TV market,” says Financial Express.
The BCCI win gives STAR India CEO considerable clout at the negotiating table when the nitty-gritties of the divorce are hammered out. ESPN, in effect, loses out on a large part of cricket for the next six-and-half years if they play hardball with STAR. The cricket win changes the power equation – and the divorce would be a lot friendlier than it would have been if MSM had been a couple of hundred crores braver.
Things are looking good for STAR India. They’re leading the pack in the most lucrative part of the TV business with STAR Plus, and the cricket win means that there’s a new genre (as far as they are concerned) that they will have considerable play in.
So now Star India completely owns ESPN-STAR Sports which runs channels like Star Sports, Star Cricket and ESPN in India and Asia with HD feed for some channels.
I guess soon we could see ESPN (& ESPN HD) renamed to some another name which may include "STAR" in its name
Yesterday i saw a tweet from Sanjeev Palar who is an anchor for F1 in ESPN Star Sports...which contained a photo stating that very soon you will see this change which contained ESPN HD to Fox HD...ESPN to Fox and many more...tried searching for that photo i could not get it now from his tweet account..
ESPN is very popular name, why would they change it? Unless, its deal similar to Honda where Honda allowed Hero to use their name for few years even after partnership was over.
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