Expanding its footprint in the country, Discovery Communications today launched its sports channel DSPORT that will broadcast over 4,000 hours of live content a year across sports like horse racing, cycling, football, golf, motorsports and cricket among others.
"India is one of the first market where we are expanding our sporting play (beyond Europe). We have realised that there are some passionate sporting communities or fans, whose needs are completely undermet in India right now because of the over emphasis on cricket," Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific Senior Vice President and General Manager, Karan Bajaj told reporters here.
Among the sports properties that the new channel will offer include football from Brazilian League, Chinese Super League, Portuguese League and Major League Soccer (USA); golf from British Open, US Open, PGA Championship and LPGA; NASCAR motor racing, and six Nations Rugby along with UK and Irish horse racing events.
"We have 4,000 hours of live content which is 3-4 times more than the next broadcaster in sports. We will have at least 10 hours of live content a day in sports that we think are very popular but yet underserved," he said.
"We know exactly who we are getting after. So it is not like we are spreading ourselves too thin by buying rights here and there. We are building scale in properties that we think have a wide viewership in India, who don't have currently access to them. We are picking up sports based on three criteria -- popular, unmet and causing a disruption -- (if we do that in our acquisition) then it is a home run for us," he added.
DSPORT is in advanced negotiations for selected high quality cricket events to add to its portfolio.
"We are in advanced discussions with one or two cricket boards. If the business model turns out be right, if the properties are at the right valuation and we feel we can add value to it, we buy it. If we have enough live hours then we will buy it. We will have cricket very soon on the channel in next couple of months," Bajaj said.
The channel has roped in former Managing Director of
ESPN Star R C Venkateish as a consultant, especially in areas related to content acquisition.
Discovery has been present in India for nearly 20 years with different global brands such as Discovery Channel, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Science and Turbo/Velocity.
The media firm is also planning to expanding its reach in the country by localising content, starting with its flagship channel Discovery.
"India is one of the top 3-5 priority markets for Discovery and we are going to make significant investments. We are going to invest heavily in widening the reach of Discovery in India. We are going to go after mass consumers. So far Discovery has been an urban metro kind of niche but we are now going to tier II and tier III consumers," he said.
"We will expand our genres from survival and outdoors to military, which is aspirational to a consumer in tier II or tier III cities, and genres like crime and inspiration. We will also invest heavily in local content. Discovery in the last 10 years has had 5 hours of local content a year and starting from June we will have 200 hours of local content a year. At the end of 2017, we will have 50 per cent local content and 50 per cent international content," he added.
He declined to give the investment details for both sports and local content strategy but said the investment for the new initiatives are in millions of dollars.
