Canadian media company Fight Media has been granted approval by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the country’s telecommunications watchdog, to launch a television channel dedicated to fantasy sports.
The new channel, entitled ‘The League,’ will feature call-in shows and discussion programmes to enable fans to gain advice on picks and drafts for their fantasy teams.
As a condition of the licence awarded by the regulator, coverage of live sports events must not take up more than 10 per cent of the channel’s total output.
Fight Media aims to launch the channel by the middle of this year.
Fight Media chief executive Leonard Asper told the Canadian Press news agency: “We’re clearly fulfilling a need that is only partially fulfilled by current sports networks. We’re like any niche sports channel. It’s not a mass audience appeal channel. It’s for the people who do watch it and they watch it in a large number of hours and we expect it to be their home channel.”