Broadcaster Kicks Off New Programme Toyota Football Up Close
24 January 2005, Singapore : English Premier League fans across Asia are being served up more football than in England on Asia’s number one sports broadcaster ESPN STAR Sports and they can look forward to even more exciting football action. The network kicks off its latest football show on 26 January 2005 called Toyota Football Up Close, a 13-part series that will add to an already comprehensive programme line-up that includes Football Focus, Tiger First Edition, Football Crazy and Here We Go.
Hosted by one of ESPN STAR Sports’ best-known faces, John Dykes, Toyota Football Up Close covers a series of in-depth profile interviews with past or present players from the English Premier League. The show focuses primarily on the players’ career in the game, embellished with brief highlights from the archives and statistics. Throughout the series, football viewers will get the real deal as the programme is shot entirely on location in the United Kingdom – home of the English football scene.
Said Huw Bevan, Vice President of Production, ESPN STAR Sports: “Toyota Football Up Close adds that something extra to whet the appetite of our football viewers who are constantly craving for more soccer news, especially updates and information on their favourite players. ESPN STAR Sports’ close association with the League and FAPL Clubs enabled us to gain access to some of the world’s best players who openly and candidly talked about their careers in extended interviews. Toyota Football Up Close has allowed the network to take full advantage of this relationship to produce a programme series with a distinct style and format. We are certain our viewers will find this new format very entertaining!”
Expect nothing but the most impressive line-up of past and present players ever featured on a programme in Asia as host John Dykes talks to the biggest names in the world of football such as Dennis Bergkamp, Gary Speed, Steve McManaman, Sam Allardyce, Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer, Jamie Redknapp and David Dein.
Toyota Football Up Close, which airs every Wednesday starting 26 January on ESPN and STAR Sports channels at 21:00 hrs Hong Kong time, will debut with an upclose interview with Dennis Bergkamp.
ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world’s leading cable and satellite broadcasters, ESPN Inc. and STAR. We are Asia’s complete sports provider reaching over 110 million households for ESPN and over 54 million households for STAR Sports. We have 13 networks – ESPN Asia, ESPN India, ESPN Taiwan, ESPN Philippines, MBC-ESPN (Korea), ESPN Singapore, ESPN Hong Kong, Xing Kong Sports, STAR Sports India, STAR Sports Taiwan, STAR Sports Singapore, STAR Sports S.E.A and STAR Sports Hong Kong. We bring the world’s premier live sports and leading regional events to viewers 24 hours a day. On the ground, the ESPN STAR Sports Event Management Group manages and promotes premier sporting events around Asia, including the Asian X Games and the San Miguel Asian 9Ball Tour. On-line, espnstar.com, espnstar.com.cn and espnstar.com.tw interact with millions of users providing them with in-depth sports news, results and competitions. This multilingual, online platform which is closely integrated with ESPN and STAR Sports on air networks, has established the sites as the number one on-line sports destination in their respective markets.
For further information, please contact:
Stephenie Vasko, ESPN STAR Sports tel: (65) 6488 6126 or email: mailtvaskos@espnstar.com
Cheryl Sim, ESPN STAR Sports tel: (65) 6488 6134 or email: mailtsimc@espnstar.com