''SportsCenter Asia'' (formerly ''Fox Sports Central'') is the flagship sports newscast broadcast on Fox Sports in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. As ESPN Star Sports ''SportsCenter'', there have been Malaysian and Indian editions of the programme.

History

A flagship sports newscast on

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 ...

, ''SportsCenter Asia'' was based on the American counterpart, broadcast every weeknight at 7:30 p.m. for 30 minutes, with repeats at 10 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Hong Kong-time in Southeast Asia, (except in the Philippines where it was broadcast at 9:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m on delay) and at 8:30 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. across India, ''SportsCenter'' drew on the worldwide resources of

. ''SportsCenter Asia'' covered mostly

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

, but it also showed highlights of the

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

Formula One Formula One (F1) is the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel single-seater formula Auto racing, racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one ...

, and

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...

. Jason Dasey spearheaded the official launch of ''SportsCenter Asia'' on 27 May 2002. The 2003 Asian Television Awards recognized it as the region's number one show of its kind by winning the 'Best Sports Program' category, and the 2005 Asian Television Awards commended it for 'Best News Program.' Other past anchors of the program include Uday Joshi, Bethan Evans, Cheryl Liew, David Basheer, and Arnold Gay. Colette Wong, a former

CNBC Asia CNBC Asia is a Singapore-based Business journalism, business news channel owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is a pan-Asian branch of the U.S.-based CNBC. The channel initially launched on 20 June 1997 out of Ho ...

correspondent, joined as a co-anchor in March 2004, while Steve Dawson joined as an assistant producer in late 2004. Dez Corkhill was the original executive producer and sometimes appeared on the show as a football pundit. ESPN International football commentator Dave Roberts returned to Singapore in late 2011 to take over as Senior Executive Producer for ''SportsCenter'' and other news and production programs before leaving in early 2015. Following

News Corporation The original incarnation of News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp. and also variously known as News Corporation Limited) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media corporation founded and controlled by media mogul Ru ...

's take over of

ESPN Star Sports Fox Sports Asia (formerly ESPN Star Sports) was a pan-Asian pay television network broadcasting in Asia, operated by Fox Networks Group Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company (Southeast Asia) Pte. Ltd. It also oversaw a version o ...

(which jointly operated ESPN and Star Sports in the region) in 2012, ESPN aired the last edition of first incarnation of ''SportsCenter Asia'' on 25 January 2013, and returned with the first edition as ''Fox Sports Central'' on 28 January, the day ESPN was relaunched as Fox Sports. Fox Sports in Taiwan used to produce a local edition in Mandarin Chinese from the studios in Taipei. On 18 September 2020, it was reported that programme would end after Disney announced that it would shut down Fox Sports operations in Taiwan at end of 2020. It was later revealed that operations in Taiwan would end on 1 January 2021 following years on losing money in the region. The revamped version and second incarnation of ''SportsCenter Asia'', launched on 26 January 2021, broadcasts every day on Disney's Fox Sports Asia networks.

Editions

Taiwan

The Taiwanese edition of ''Fox Sports Central'' (; a title kept from ''SportsCenter'' days) focused on local sports news and events in Taiwan, and the updates of athletes from Taiwan. Also, the program presented daily highlights of games which Fox Sports Taiwan had broadcasting rights.

Malaysia

A Malaysian version of ''SportsCenter'' was launched on 30 April 2007. Initially presented in English, ''SportsCenter Malaysia'' aired immediately before ''SportsCenter Asia'', from 7pm local time. It promised to focus more on local sports in Malaysia but instead repeated most of the same content seen on ''SportsCenter Asia'' with only a brief domestic sports section to keep costs down. For a short time, ''SportsCenter Malaysia'' used to be featured on all Southeast Asian versions of ESPN, before being limited to only been shown on ESPN in Malaysia. ''SportsCenter Malaysia'' had a Bahasa Malaysia version, which also repeated much of the same content shown on SportsCenter Asia. The Bahasa Malaysia program began on 30 November 2009 ahead of the launch of a Bahasa Malaysia competitor, Astro Arena, in March 2010. Former ''SportsCenter'' personalities Rashid Salleh and Edleen Ismail soon departed from ESPN to join

Astro Astro may refer to: Entertainment and media * Astro (South Korean band), a South Korean boy band * Astro (UB40) (born Terence Wilson) (1957–2021), rapper and member of the British reggae band UB40 * Astro (Chilean band), a Chilean indie ro ...

, along with many technical and production staff. On 9 December 2010, the Malaysia office was informed that the operation would be soon closing down because of a lack of funding. Senior managers Huw Bevan and Sharon Van Zwieten, visiting from Singapore, read off a prepared script to dismiss each staff member, one-by-one. The final broadcast was eight days later on 17 December 2010.

India

Originally a Hindi-language show, ''Sportscenter India'' first aired in English on 6 October 2003. It switched back to Hindi on 18 July 2005, before being relaunched in English on 28 April 2007. ''Sportscenter India'' featured local Indian sporting news, such as the results of

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

matches and local

(I-League). ''Sportscenter India'' also covered league matches from European football and also some new from

. Other sports like Auto Racing, Multi-sporting events and all where India participated were covered in this news. Much of the content from ''SportsCenter Asia'' was also repeated in ''SportsCenter India''. The Indian edition was discontinued.

References