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In a move that aims to broadcast all sports without interruption, Star is now launching two new channels Star Sports Select HD 1 and Star Sports Select HD 2 to its international sports portfolio. Sportskeeda spoke to Star Sports CEO, Nitin Kukreja about this decision- “We’ve been focusing a lot on domestic leagues and sports over the last three years, somewhere we also realized that the international sports fan is a very passionate one.
“And to that effect, we’re launching 2 channels which will be exclusively dedicated to international sports”, he said.
Asked about which sports in particular, Nitin said, “The Premier league, Bundesliga, Formula 1 and the tennis grand slams. Which will mean many more games and a lot of more behind the scenes content. Alongside it will be a much more enhanced experience because it will only be in HD.
“We’ll be showing close to 300 premier league games. Probably one of the highest in the world”, said the CEO.
Nitin was keen to point out why they specifically chose to go with both HD channels, “Look the HD family is growing. We’re already in around 7 million homes. We think the international sports events deserve this experience that HD offers. This is just the start of this journey”, he reckons.
Digressing a bit from the topic, The Pro Kabaddi League which airs on Star Sports saw of lot of player changes in season four. Something that could hamper the viewing numbers. But Nitin believes otherwise, “Not really. I think teams are certainly more competitive right now. You can see that from the way the league is panning out at the halfway mark. Having said that, a large number of marquee players are still with their teams”
“So, Anup Kumar is still with U Mumba. Rishank is still very much with U Mumba. Jasvir with Jaipur. Rahul Chaudhari is still with the Telugu Titans. I would say there are at least 4-5 players in each team that are consistent with the previous seasons” he concluded.
Both, Star Sports Select HD 1 and 2 will launch in the first week of August 2016.
