MUMBAI: With a lot of live sports content at its disposal, Star India is gearing up to launch a new sports channel under the Star Sports brand on 11 March.

Christened Star Sports 2, the channel will have international football as its driver content. It will also show other sports content.

Star has the broadcast rights to football properties like English Premier League, Spanish league La Liga and Italian league Serie A for India besides FA Cup rights.

"Yes, we are launching a new sports channel on 11 March. Star Sports 2 will primarily have international football content besides other sports content," Star India COO Sanjay Gupta tells Indiantelevision.com.

The channel will be initially available on digital cable networks and will be subsequently rolled out on analog cable networks across the country.

Star is launching the new channel to avoid overlapping of cricket content with other sports content. The problem only accentuates when India cricket is on as the broadcaster has a bi-lingual feed in English and Hindi on Star Sports and Star Cricket.

It will also help the broadcaster to streamline the scheduling of its different properties.

"We have a lot of sports content, so at times we are unable to utilise this content when there are multiple events lined up simultaneously," Gupta explains.

The broadcaster has dedicated supply of cricket content throughout the year as it holds the media rights for three cricket boards, India, Australia and England, in addition to the ICC rights. Besides cricket and football, Star also boasts of rights to properties like Formula One, MotoGP, Wimbledon, Australian Open in Tennis, and PGA Tour.

News Corps, which had last year acquired ESPN?s stake in joint venture ESPN Star Sports (ESS) for $335 million, had restructured its sports broadcasting business in Asia. While the India business was brought under Star India, the rest of Asia business came under Fox Star Sports Asia under Peter Hutton.

Subsequently, the ESPN brand name was dropped across Asia except India where Star is awaiting government clearance on the ESS acquisition before taking a call on change of brand name.

"We have still not decided what we will do with ESPN. We are considering both Fox as well as Star brand name. However, a final call is yet to be taken," Gupta discloses.

MUMBAI: With the aim of taking brand Star beyond television, News Corp-owned broadcast network Star India has associated with Shripal Morakhia-promoted sports-based entertainment centre Smaaash.

The centre, spread over 24,000 sq. ft. at Kamla Mills Compound, Lower Parel, is in line with Star?s promise of inspiring and entertaining audiences.

Star India?s association with Cricket began in June when it acquired the media rights for international and domestic cricket played in India till 2018 for Rs 38.51 billion.

With Smaaash, the broadcaster looks to extend its association with cricket fans from television sets to on-ground.

Star, whose acquisition of ESS? sports broadcast businesses is now virtually imminent, will provide international quality cricket experience to sport buffs through the centre. Smaaash promises to bring an international quality cricket experience, where the players can face off against top cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar, Brett Lee, Anil Kumble and many others in a simulated environment.

Smaaash Centre has eight cricket lanes, an F&B arena and other arcade games including a F1 simulator, FPS simulator etc. The Smaaash cricket lanes enable live cricket play using the Hawk-Eye & Bola technology.

Cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar is the brand ambassador of Smaaash and has been actively involved in this concept during the initial testing as well as in designing the overall experience.

Star India CEO Uday Shankar said the association was a way for Star to extend its brand on the ground. "This is an open ended partnership and we want to take it to the next level. This is the first time that we are doing something like this. As a media company we feel it is important for us to connect with consumers beyond television. Our aim is to increase the depth of the level at which we connect with consumers," Shankar said.

With family as its core TG, Smaaash uses sports simulation technology and it allows fans to play against famous players and also to step into their shoes. Tendulkar played a role in designing the simulator experience and was also involved in the initial testing. The aim was to make sure that the simulator stayed true to the game and that the technology augmented the user?s experience so that there is authentic action.

Nea India advisor A.P. Parigi said that the initiative was 12 - 14 months in the making. "This is our flagship property. We have received requests for franchises in other cities but we want to make sure that this fares well. This is the country?s first immersive consumer engagement activity. It is Augmented Reality. We want to deliver what we promise and our aim is to deliver a holistic experience. The vibes so far have been good and the interest has been strong. The initiative is scalable. If you look at the trends today being seen malls, entertainment if you deliver value then people will spend money even in a downturn."

The cricket simulator has a ball tracking system powered by Hawkeye technology that evaluates shots played and even calculates outcomes in real time including adjudicating wickets. For fans of F1 there is a racing simulator which is a full motion, professional machine that is employed by motorsport teams.

In soccer there is Robot Goalkeeper which is a man versus machine challenge. Users can see how they will fare in a penalty shootout. Another simulator blends football with pool. The game is Poolball where a large pool table meets a small football field.