Neo Sports inks deal with Tata Sky

Sports broadcaster Neo Sports and direct-to-home (DTH) service provider Tata Sky have announced a long term agreement.

According to the deal, the two channels Neo Sports and Neo Sports Plus will be available on the Tata Sky platform with immediate effect.


Neo Sports CEO Shashi Kalathil said, "Neo Sports' carriage on India's premier DTH Platform, Tata Sky, is a major and propitious announcement that we are making as an independently distributed bouquet. There are several customer interactive innovations possible around cricket and we shall be working closely with Tata Sky to bring to our viewers an unmatched viewing experience during the upcoming India Australia series."

Tata Sky MD and CEO Vikram Kaushik said, "We are delighted that Neo Sports with their unparalleled depth of India cricket rights will now be available to our viewers on Tata Sky."


Two months back, Neo Sports decided to independently distribute its TV channels after terminating their distribution arrangement with Star India.
On the cable front, Neo Sports is on an aggressive distribution ramp up for the forthcoming October India-Australia ODI series.

Kalathil said that Neo Sports had already signed cable distribution deals in major cities in North, Central and parts of West India. These include Delhi, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Camper, Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Baroda.

Kalathil said, "Traditionally broadcasters have been very advertising focused and have played for high stakes in the metros such as Delhi and Mumbai and advertising critical centres such as Gurgaon, where most of the media agencies have offices. Our approach has been different. In Phase-1 we went to the traditionally less penetrated states such as MP, UP and Rajasthan. It is incidental that while doing so we are now 100 per cent lit in Gurgaon and the large cities of Gujarat too. This is Phase-1 of our rollout strategy."

Kalathil went on to further clarify that in phase-two of the rollout by the end of the first week of September, Neo would cover platforms such as DTH and some of the major MSOs.

The third phase of the rollout by mid September would cover much of the South, another traditionally less focussed region for national broadcasters. "This is critical to our multi language cricket broadcast strategy" he added.

The final part of the roll out would be in the large metros and would be complete by middle of September, in time to catch the October India - Australia ODI series.


Related Post
DTH has to offer subscribers instalment schemes: Trai
DTH firms HITS out at multi-system operators
Dish TV, Tata Sky to have Sun channels
Tata Sky touches one million subscribers, targets 8 million by 2012