ESPN Acquires Caribbean Rights for Champions League Twenty20
June 27, 2012
ESPN International has entered into a cricket distribution agreement with ESPN Star Sports (ESS) for International Cricket Council (ICC) events and the Champions League Twenty20 for the Caribbean market.
The development comes in the wake of ESPN exiting the Asian market after selling its stake to News Corp in the Asian sports broadcasting joint venture ESPN Star Sports. Post the clearance of the stake sale, anabolics ESPN will be present in Asia through its digital media products.
The ICC agreement is a four-year deal from 2012 to 2015 and covers several ICC events, including the global showpiece of the cricket calendar, the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
The distribution agreement covers terrestrial, cable, satellite and new media platform rights. ICC programming will be presented on two ESPN Caribbean television networks–ESPN Caribbean and ESPN 2 Caribbean and on ESPNPlay.com, the region’s recently launched broadband network for live sports programming.
The Champions League Twenty20 agreement extends ESPN’s current three-year deal by three more years covering 2013-2015. The agreement covers all of ESPN Caribbean’s media platforms including the two networks, ESPN Caribbean and ESPN 2 Caribbean, and ESPNPlay.com.
“We are delighted to again showcase talented cricketers from the West Indies who will play in the ICC World Twenty20 and the Champions League Twenty20 later this year, as well as the crown jewel of cricket – the ICC Cricket World Cup – in 2015,” Stewart said. “Cricket is essential to our programming in the West Indies and has a dynamic following there. This long-term agreement reinforces our commitment to providing world-class cricket to Caribbean fans.”
“We have succeeded in securing some very significant long-term broadcast partnerships for the ICC events and we are very pleased to be working with ESPN to showcase an exciting calendar of ICC cricket events in this cricket market,” said ESS SVP corporate development & cricket rights Anurag Dahiya.