The channel went live on 6 February and reached about 35 million households.
In this fast evolving digital space where more and more digital platforms are providing live coverage of several sports events, Discovery Networks, in the current scenario, does not see owning a digital platform as the best profitable business in India. Though, it is entering the digital space with its remarkable IPs which they are licensing across multiple digital Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms.
“We are acquiring linear and digital rights for every property. We are creating digital brands with digital native players which we will be licensing through multiple platforms. My objective is to serve the digital consumers; the consumers who are looking at things digitally. And launching a digital platform is subscale for us.”
The channel will be a part of the sports tier via a subscription model on both DTH and cable in both HD and SD. It has already partnered with Hathway and bunch of other cable platforms and are in talks with several DTH players. “The channel will be distributed in the same way as our other channels,” added Bajaj.
Bajaj also opined that the channel has received very strong response from the advertisers. In its initial phase, the channel does not plan to have any advertisements to hit the scale and distribution for a lucrative business of its advertisers.
The network is marketing the channel thoughtfully. It is promoting the channel community wise rather than massively. “It is best to target specific communities to market the channel rather than doing one or two big promotional activities,” added Bajaj.
DSport, Discovery's expansion into under-served areas beyond factual | Indian Television Dot Com