Star India to launch multi-lingual sports channel

After the success of its regional sports channels, Star India is all set up to launch a multi-language sports channel named Star Sports 3. The new channel will reportedly be launched on September 15. Star Sports 3 will come in the place of Channel V in India as the latter will cease to exist from the intervening midnight between September 14 and 15. Star Sports has already notified this direction.

Star Sports’ experiment with regional languages while broadcasting has been hugely successful and it was seen during the Indian Premier League (IPL) this year. The mega tournament was broadcast in eight different languages over 17 screens.

To conceptualise local language audio feed

According to a report in InsideSport, Star Sports 3 will start with the broadcasting of the Hindi feed of the Indian Super League. The channel is conceptualised to give local language audio feed in various states. In the first phase, the languages and states that are being targeted are Kannada (Karnataka), Malayalam (Kerala), Telugu (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) and Marathi (Maharashtra and Goa), the report added.

The broadcaster has received the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s nod to launch Star Sports 3, as per a Television Post report.

“Star Sports 3 will be a multi-lingual channel offering popular content. Star is testing the market through this channel,” Television Post quoted a source which is closely following the development. The new channel will air popular tournaments like IPL besides other local leagues like Pro Kabbadi and Indian Super League.

Besides the multi-language channel, Star Sports is also proceeding with its plans to launch regional sports channels in languages like Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam and Telugu.

Star currently has two regional sports channels – Star Sports 1 Hindi and Star Sports 1 Tamil. The broadcaster had earlier planned to launch Star Sports 1 Kannada replacing Channel V and also got the Government of India’s approval prior to the IPL. However, it seems that the plan didn’t work for them.

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