Sony-owned Indian broadcaster Multi Screen Media will launch a new pay-television sports channel during the forthcoming 2015 season of Twenty20 cricket competition the Indian Premier League.
Sony Kix will complement the existing Sony Six channel and will be available via all of India’s major cable television and direct-to-home platforms.
The channel will debut during the 2015 IPL, which gets underway tomorrow (Wednesday). Along with English, Sony Kix will carry Tamil and Telegu language feeds with MSM executives stating its initial major geographic target will be south India.
The new channel will be led by Prasana Krishnan, head of business at Sony Six. He told the IndianTelevision.com website: “With the number of sports we have in our catalogue, a new sports channel launch was just a matter of time. Recently we saw a number of Fifa (football) matches taking place simultaneously and we were handicapped since we could not air all of them. Moreover, we also at times had to place important matches on our GECs (general entertainment channels) and that creates a lot of confusion for consumers. As the name suggests, Kix will mainly focus on football and fight sports but whenever needed it will complement Six with other sports too.”
MSM chief executive NP Singh added: “While the resounding success of Six in less than three years was a deciding factor to launch Kix, there was also this need to cater to the clear demand seen in the market for largely alternative sports programming. Kix promises to be a great addition to our mix of channels and will go on to complement Six in more ways than one with exciting and iconic properties such as Pepsi IPL, UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and NFL (National Football League) among many others.”