Liberty Global’s Dutch cablenet Ziggo will launch Ziggo Sport before year’s end to be distributed at no additional cost to its four million customers.
According to a report in Algemeen Dagblad, the new channel will be build around the current premium sports channel Sport1, which holds live rights to a large number of major sports events including Champions League, Spanish football, European Cup qualifiers, various golf, tennis and rugby tournaments, as well as Formula 1 racing.
The new ‘free’ channel would help Ziggo in the fierce competition with KPN, who is fast winning TV market share en it is currently the second largest digital TV platform. The new channel could be exclusive to Ziggo subscribers, but the current Sport1 premium channels would continue to be available on all platforms in the country.
Sport1 is the only remaining premium channel in the Netherlands owned by Liberty Global, after the operator had to sell its premium movie Film1 channels to Sony.
Liberty Global’s spokesperson Manuel Kohnstamm did not want to confirm the news saying it was ‘market speculation.’
