Sony ESPN was an Indian pay television sports channel which was a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

and

Sony Pictures Networks Culver Max Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., trading as Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN or SPNI), is an Indian media conglomerate owned by Sony Pictures Television. SPN manages and operates 26 television channels, the streaming media platform SonyLIV, ...

. The channel targeted the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...

including India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It was part of the Sony Sports Network group.

History

The channel launched on 8 April 2015 as Sony Kix, coinciding with the 2015 Indian Premier League. In October 2015, Multi Screen Media announced a partnership with

ESPN International ESPN International is a family of Broadcasting of sports events, sportscasting and production networks around the world. It was begun in 1983, is operated by ESPN Inc. and owned by The Walt Disney Company. Current operations Canada ESPN Int ...

, which would include the rebranding of Sony Kix as Sony ESPN, and collaboration on digital properties (including partnerships with properties such as

ESPNcricinfo ESPNcricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a ...

). The venture returned the ESPN brand to Indian television for the first time since

Star India Disney Star (also known as JioStar), registered as JioStar India Private Limited, is an Indian media conglomerate joint venture owned with a share of 16.34% by Reliance Industries, 46.82% by Viacom18 and 36.84% by Disney India. On 14 Nove ...

rebranded its ESPN Star Sports channels as Star Sports in 2013. After 9 months, the channel changed its name to Sony ESPN on 15 January 2018 on the same day when the high-definition version of this channel was launched coinciding with the

2018 Australian Open The 2018 Australian Open was a tennis tournament played at Melbourne Park between 15 and 28 January 2018, and was the first Grand Slam tournament of the 2018 season. The tournament consisted of events for professional players in singles, double ...

. On 18 July 2017, the channel became part of Sony Sports Network following SPN's acquisition of TEN Sports. The channel was shut down on 30 March 2020. It has been replaced By Sony Ten 4 and Sony Ten 4 HD.

References

External links

* {{Sony Pictures ESPN Sony Pictures Networks India Television channels and stations established in 2015 Television stations in Mumbai 2015 establishments in Maharashtra Television channels and stations disestablished in 2020 Defunct television channels in India