Mumbai, July 1st, 2003: Ten Sports has purchased the Asian, sub-continent and Middle East television rights to broadcast all cricket played in the West Indies. The period for the new agreement is from 2004-2008 inclusive and starts with the next cricket due to be played in the West Indies – the England tour of the islands in March 2004. In total, the new agreement guarantees a further 180 days of international cricket to Ten Sports including the India tour of the West Indies in 2006.
Chris McDonald, the CEO of Ten Sports, said ‘It’s a huge step forward for the channel and will be a real pleasure to show the unique atmosphere and character of West Indian cricket live and exclusive on Ten Sports. We now have a great package of quality cricket that will be shown live in prime time and are confident of a great response from viewers and advertisers’
Ten Sports purchased the Asian television rights for the West Indies from UK broadcaster Sky Television, who have taken over the worldwide television rights for West Indian cricket. For the past 10 years, either Star Sports or ESPN had showed cricket in the West Indies.
McDonald added ‘We now have agreements in place to show as much international one day cricket on TEN sports alone as ESPN and Star Sports combined in the coming years. Considering that we launched only just over a year ago, it is remarkable that we are now the top rated sports channel in the sub-continent and with more live cricket to come, we can only keep on growing’
Ten Sports has already entered into long term deals with the Srilanka and the Pakistan boards for their worldwide television rights as well as acquiring the right to all Sharjah and Morocco triangular cricket events. Ten Sports also broadcast the 2002 Football World Cup exclusively in the sub-continent and the 2003 Cricket World Cup in Pakistan.
According to McDonald ‘The next 12 months promises to be a fantastic period for Ten Sports. In addition to our unique wrestling content from WWE, we can look forward to live and exclusive coverage of events such as South Africa’s tour of Pakistan, England and Australia’s tours of Sri Lanka, the English tour of the West Indies, the Sharjah Cup, Pakistan playing India in the Champions Trophy hockey and more of the worlds biggest golf and tennis events. It should be a great year!’
For more details contact:
Peter Hutton, Ten Sports
Tel: 00 971 4 391 9505
E-mail: huttonp@tajtv.com