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Zee Telefilms will be launching its sports channel on October 1. The channel is temporarily christened Zee Sports. Zee was counting on the bagging of the telecast rights of all the ICC organised cricket matches. But it lost out to Rupert Murdoch who walked home with the telecast rights.This was seen as a major blow for the launch of the Zee Sports channel. But the channel executives announced that they would go ahead with the launch of Zee Sports channel. The executives claimed that they have enough software for the channel to keep it going and to make it successful.
Zee has recently taken a 60% stake in the Goa-based soccer club Churchill Brothers. The channel is also looking out for similar tie-ups with other such sports bodies. Besides this, officials have confirmed that they will have cricket, soccer, tennis, athletics and other sports software for their new channel.On the recent controversy of the awarding of ICC cricket telecast rights, the channel is up in arms against the ICC for awarding the rights to its rival group backed by Rupert Murdoch. Zee executives have claimed that this decision smells of racism and that they would not sit back and except his decision and that they are consulting various legal experts to take appropriate action against the ICC. Zee had bid $666 million for the rights where as News Corp/WSG bid $550 million, which is $1 million lower than Zee‘s bid.
