With just 50 days to go for the greatest celebration of sports on earth to be set in motion at Rio de Janeiro, Nitin Kukreja, CEO of Star Sports has announced the format in which the popular television network will telecast the 2016 Summer Olympics live. Star Sports would beam the Olympics to India and six of its neighbouring South-Asian countries namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, The Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
For the first time ever, Star India will have eight channels dedicated for the airing of the Games in real time. Having acquired the digital rights as well, Star will deliver live streaming through starsports.com and the Hotstar app without any subscription fee.
With the broadcaster equipped with 14 simultaneous feeds on its platform which can support up to 36 parallel seeds on requirement, viewers will be able to watch 3000+ hours of live content – in both English and Hindi commentaries – seamlessly from Rio 2016 during the period from August 5th to 21st.
Also read: India's 5 biggest hopes at the Rio Olympics 2016
Such an offering of the Olympic Games is unprecedented in the history of Indian television. With India fielding their largest ever Olympic contingent this year at Rio, chances of securing a best ever medal tally have gone up as well. Therefore, Mr Kukreja has promised to arrange the broadcasting schedule putting a special focus on the events that have Indian representatives participating – something that should add to the excitement from the audience’s perspective.
Another welcome move is bringing on some champion athletes from the national and international arena who will double up as sports analysts to walk us through the action as it gets under way in Rio.
The panel features 5-time Olympic gold winning Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, former World Number 1 in 10m Air Rifle Anjali Bhagwat, erstwhile skipper of the Indian hockey team Viren Rasquinha, Arjuna Awardee Rehan Poncha and Badminton icon Prakash Padukone, besides TV presenters Paula Malai Ali and Divya Jaitley.
As the nation awakes to the glorious possibilities that the sporting extravaganza brings forth, fans across India will get to feast their eyes on the live action on the Star Network as the Summer Games unfold at Rio.
