ESPN International
ESPN International is a family of sportscasting and production networks around the world. It was begun in 1989, is operated by ESPN Inc. and owned by The Walt Disney Company.
ESPN International does not directly operate its own channels in Canada, but owns a 20 percent voting interest (and slightly larger equity interest) in CTV Specialty Television, a subsidiary of the Canadian media company Bell Media. Canadian regulations on the foreign ownership of broadcasters prohibit ESPN from acquiring majority interest.
CTV Specialty Television in turn operates the following sports television channels:
Although these channels have retained their local brands (ESPN having acquired part-ownership several years after TSN and RDS launched), they adopted ESPN-style logos in 2001, and use other ESPN branding elements such as the SportsCentre title for TSN's sports highlights programs. CTV Specialty also operated a Canadian version of ESPN Classic from 2001 to 2023.
Through CTV Specialty, ESPN also has an indirect interest in Discovery Channel Canada and certain related channels operated in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery. These holdings date to CTV Specialty's previous incarnations as Labatt Communications and later as NetStar Communications, in which ESPN also held a minority interest. ESPN is not believed to have any involvement with the WBD-branded operations.
ESPN is also indirectly associated with TSN Radio, a brand used by several sports radio stations (each wholly owned by Bell Media), each of which also carries a limited amount of ESPN Radio programming.
Former operations[edit]
Asia-Pacific[edit]
In June 2012, News Corporation announced it would acquire ESPN's 50% stake in its joint venture ESPN Star Sports.[1] Following the takeover, ESPN in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia was relaunched as Fox Sports in January 2013,[2] while a version for Mainland China became Star Sports 2 in January 2014. Meanwhile, Star India acquired ESPN Software India from ESPN Star Sports,[3] but kept ESPN brand for a while.[4] ESPN International later established a partnership with what is now Sony Pictures Networks India in October 2015, and relaunched Sony Kix as Sony ESPN in January 2016. Sony ESPN was shut down in March 2020.