Star Sports relaunches, ESPN bits adieu until after 2018

With effect from midnight ESPN bit adieu to the subcontinent and has left the entire asian region and will be in exile for a period of at least 5 years or more. The channel owned by Disney had formed a JV with Star Sports and operated as ESPN Star Sports for more than a decade or so. According to the terms of JV, it would mean that ESPN will only be allowed to return to Asia again after a period of 5 years which would put a probable return date after 2018 & somewhere in the next decade.

Although it was expected that ESPN will be replaced by Fox Sports as was the rest of Asia, it was sadly not to be so, due to the transfer of the subcontinent sports business Star Singapore to Star India, this resulted in an "Indian-ization" of the business just as such when Sri Lanka lost Star Movies Asia and was given a lower grade Star Movies India.

From the early hours of this morning the following changes came into affect on the former ESPN Star Sports, not only did the logo change, which is very quite similar to the Star logo of decades gone by. The logo is similar to the newer Star logo that is widely in use in the rest of Asia, but is only up to now being used by Star Plus India.

• Star Sports 1 - formerly Star Sports.
• Star Sports 2 - remains the same.
• Star Sports 3 - formerly Star Cricket carrying mainly Hindi programming plus Indian local content.
• Star Sports 4 - formerly ESPN, ** now dual language.

• Star Sports HD 1 - formerly Star Cricket HD.
• Star Sports HD 2 - formerly ESPN HD.

By looking at the schedule on www.starsports.com it seems that Star Sports 1 & Star Sports HD 1 will carry the same content one in HD and the other SD, whilst Star Sports 4 & Star Sports HD 2 will do the same. However this will change specially when there are multiple "live" telecasts to be carried broadcast at the same time specially during a time such as the 2016 Summer Olympic Games for which Star Sports holds the exclusive rights in this region. Now with 6 channels they can carry more events live too.

Now those local pay television companies namely Dialog TV, PEO TV & LBN Cable TV should add Star Sports 2 immediately owing to conversion of the former Star Cricket to Hindi, or temporarily replace Star Sports 3 (formerly Star Cricket) with Star Sports 2 and add Star Sports 3 ASAP, to avoid subscribers from missing out on "live" content on Star Sports 3 which even though is mainly Hindi, may carry English content in the event of multiple "live" events.

Further details about the channels can be obtained at Star Sports FAQ's.

** Post updated on 6th Nov 2013 at 11:30am