JioStar unveils new RIO, to launch new regional Star Sports channels by rebranding Sports18 channels

JioStar’s unchecked dominance in cricketing properties has compelled it to launch even more sports channels

It goes without saying that the focus of JioStar’s new channel launches is overwhelmingly on sports, specifically cricket, and all its new regional offerings reflect that. Star Sports and the then-Hotstar had a vice-like grip on Indian cricketing properties, plus the global ICC rights, for most of the 2010s — with the Indian Premier League (IPL), the biggest of all, being added in 2017. While Viacom18 (Sports18 and JioCinema) did bag some major cricket rights in 2022–23, namely domestic BCCI rights and the Women’s Premier League — aside from the IPL’s digital rights, aired on the then-JioCinema — the lion’s share of cricket rights remained with Star Sports and Disney+ Hotstar.

However, now that Star and Reliance have merged all their broadcast and digital properties under the JioStar umbrella, the Star Sports network and the new JioHotstar platform are once again the ultimate home of cricket, and this alone accounts for the great majority of sports viewership in India. Other broadcasters, mainly Sony Sports Network, have been forced to remain confined to the rights of certain foreign cricket boards, like England and New Zealand (the latter of which was previously with Amazon Prime Video) — though they often have several bilateral series involving India — in addition to the digital-only streaming platform FanCode.

While other sports like football, tennis, badminton, hockey, racing, kabaddi and basketball are often aired on the Star Sports channels, especially the Select channels, their popularity pales in front of cricket. This is in spite of the long-established Pro Kabaddi League and the Indian Super League in football, in addition to multi-sport tournaments like the Olympics. Ad revenue from major cricket events seems to be the primary factor behind JioStar launching even more regional sports channels — at the expense of its longstanding niche channels like Comedy Central, Vh1 and Star Life, which are being closed after a decade or two. This revenue is necessary to recoup its multi-billion-dollar investments in cricket rights.

Hindi, Tamil and Telugu get another HD sports channel — but Kannada still misses out on HD

With these new launches, JioStar increases its focus on not only Hindi, which is spoken by about half of the population, but also Tamil and Telugu, the bigger two of the four Southern languages. All of these are getting two new Star Sports 2-branded channels, one each in SD and HD. Notably, in early February 2025, the existing Sports18 channels all changed their broadcasting language accordingly, a month before their actual renaming. So Sports18 1 SD and HD will become Star Sports 2 Hindi SD and HD. Meanwhile, Sports18 2 and 3 (which were so far SD-only) will become Star Sports 2 Telugu and Tamil, respectively, and two new HD feeds will be launched separately for them. DTH and cable operators have already moved Sports18 2 and 3 to the Telugu and Tamil categories in their EPG guides.

In a third South Indian language, JioStar is also launching a new Kannada channel — Star Sports 2 Kannada — which is a renaming of its existing Star Sports First channel that was originally launched to cater to Hindi-speaking DD Free Dish audiences, but was removed from it thereafter. Star Sports First was highly redundant in the existing 17-channel Star Sports portfolio, so to convert it into a second Kannada channel is a sensible move. Moreover, another channel for DD Free Dish, Sports18 Khel, will now be rebranded as Star Sports Khel, ensuring that it continues to serve the massive Hindi-speaking rural market.

However, it seems JioStar has still not found it worthwhile to launch an HD Kannada sports (or movies, for that matter) channel. Indeed, of the six major regional movie channels under the then-Disney Star, not counting Star Maa Gold in Telugu, Star Suvarna Plus is the only one not to be available in HD. For that matter, other languages like Malayalam — the fourth South Indian language — continue to be shunned by the Star Sports network, as well as Bengali and Marathi, which had their own Star Sports channels earlier but these were axed in March 2023. In fact, Star Sports 1 Marathi was never added by any TV platforms during its existence, while the launch of Jalsha Josh in Bengali was cancelled!

The short-lived Sports18 brand never got its due in its three-year existence, with JioCinema being favoured heavily

This aggressive focus of JioStar on sports channels will boost the Star Sports network’s tally to a whopping 24 channels — 14 SD and 10 HD — up from the current 17. Moreover, it also brings an end to the three-year existence of the Sports18 brand, which the then-Viacom18 under Reliance had created to position itself as a competitor to Star Sports’ dominance. The Sports18 brand suffered from a couple of main constraints: its limited distribution across TV platforms and Reliance’s emphasis on streaming on JioCinema. With only five channels, including just one HD channel, the Sports18 network was woefully inadequate for the wide range of events shown, and Viacom18 often had to resort airing certain events like European football leagues on other channels like Vh1 and MTV.

Aggravating this was Reliance’s aggressive push for free streaming on JioCinema, be it the IPL and WPL or BCCI tournaments, at the expense of promoting the Sports18 channels. This was most exacerbated during major sporting events like the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar or the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where the TV broadcast was severely crippled, with Sports18 1 HD often being the only HD channel airing those events. While JioCinema’s streaming viewers enjoyed multiple live feeds (including in 4K) and real-time analysis, linear viewers without high-speed 4G/5G internet had no choice but to turn to the very narrowed-down Sports18 network. Sports18 could not establish itself as successfully in audiences’ minds as Star or Sony Sports Network did, but with the Sports18 channels being absorbed into the bigger Star Sports brand, this will no longer be a problem.

However, now that Viacom18 has gone from becoming Star’s arch-rival to its merger partner, the combined Star Sports network (including the Sports18 channels) and JioHotstar have only extended their lead as the leader in Indian sports broadcasting by many miles — all the more so in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Unfortunately, this also comes at the expense of several longstanding niche channels like Comedy Central, Vh1, MTV Beats and Star Life, plus Colors Odia and the HD feed of Star Kiran, which are no longer viable for JioStar to sustain in the 2020s and beyond — as we will discuss in the next article.