The Ten Sports, a sports channel promoted by Taj Television Limited, has turned the face of Indian Television. I like to present here some interesting things about Ten Sports
Background and Inception
Taj Television Ltd (owner of Ten Sports) was started in January at Dubai. Ten Sports was launched on April 1, 2002. Ten Sports was mainly covering South Asian countries. In last 4 years it reaches to Europe and other part of the world also. It is owned by Abdul Rahman Bukhatir, a person who has brought cricket to desert. Chris McDonald is Taj Television’s chief executive officer.
Programs and Coverage
Ten Sports has covered one of the most high profile Cricket series - India Vs Pakistan. This has become the boon for Ten Sports. Currently Ten sports is holding rights for Sri Lanka, Gulf, Pakistan, West Indies cricket coverage. In Football it is covering Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga and Portuguese Superliga. In Golf, Ten Sports covers European Tour, Ryder Cup and PGA Championship. Ten Sports also has rights for 2 Grand slams out of 4 in Tennis i.e. French Open and US Open. With this Trump Card for Ten Sports is WWE coverage. It covers all program of WWE like RAW, Smackdown, Afterburn, Heat etc. All hockey events for like World Cup, Champions Trophy will be on Ten Sports.
Major Benefits with Ten Sports
Now we can see almost all Cricket matches India playing along on Ten Sports + Doordarshan. So we are not dependant on ESPN & STAR Combination. There was a time when ESPN-STAR was ruling the market and looting people like anything. I still remember my Cable guy complaining that before each big series of India, ESPN-STAR used to increase its rates. People left with no choice but to obey their order. Now Ten Sports had demolished the monopoly of ESPN-STAR. Ten Sport is also running some wonderful contests for viewers Talk Box and EYE Spy is there its website. Many other contests are available while watching the Ten Sport in association with Hutch and LG.
Big Deals with Ten Sports
Ten Sports is holding exclusive rights of Cricket coverage in Sri Lanka, Sharjah, Pakistan, West Indies and Zimbabwe for four to five years. It has rights of all hockey tournaments till 2008. Ten Sports has contract with WWE for 5 years. It is also rights of US Open and French open for next 3 years. They have signed 5 years contract with WWE (I wonder how they got the contract when the Apex court has banned the same program on Star TV.) Even the biggest corporate like LG India, Pepsi, Hutch and Maruti is having their annual contracts with Ten sports where they will be one of the prime sponsor of sports programs.
Areas of Improvement
With all these pros, there are certain cons with Ten sports. I like to put this as areas of improvement. To begin with, I feel their programs are not arranged in proper way like their program sequence and timings. They are showing old Indo-Pak matches too often. They ensure that in each 3 months, all the matches shall get repeated at least once. Their WWE programs are delayed by 2 weeks so one has already seen the latest updates on https://wwe.com. Team of commentators is not that good. Earlier they were having Ian Chappell and Ravi Shastri, recently they have added Geoffrey Boycott. But they are not available now on Ten Sports as it is not good to rely on Sanjay Manjrekar only. Plus they have lost contract with Formula 1 also, it a big loss for them. They are missing some big leagues like English Premier and Spanish La Liga for soccer.
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