BANGALORE: ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has renewed the subscription contract to distribute the channels on the Dish TV DTH platform. The deal is for two years starting from 1 February, 2006.

ESPN India VP, sales and marketing, Sricharan Iyengar said, “India’s well developed cable industry has enjoyed the popularity of sports for pushing its growth. We expect that sports will have a similar effect on building the popularity of the DTH platform as well. We are extremely bullish about the growth of DTH platform in India in the coming years and expect to earn more than 100 crores as subscription revenue over the next two years.”

Dish TV CEO Sunil Khanna said, “It is our endeavour to bring the best of programmes to the homes of our customers. We have recently crossed the three million viewership mark, and presence of ESPN Star Sports has been one of the important driving factors in Dish TV’s penetration across India.”

Iyengar adds, “ESPN and Star Sports have been on the Dish TV platform for over two years. The growth of Dish TV in last one year has been very impressive and we believe that the popularity of our channels has contributed in accelerating the growth of Dish TV. ESPN Star Sports’ exciting sports content like Premier Hockey League, Fifa World Cup 2006 and so on will continue to benefit Dish TV in increasing its sales further.”