Sport is undoubtedly a powerful driver for pay-TV services in Central and Eastern Europe.
We need look no further than Poland, where the global Eleven Sports Network has recently been grabbing the headlines.
Established only last year, it operates two 24/7, multiscreen and full HD channels – football-focused Eleven and the multi-sport Eleven Sports – in the country and has already signed carriage deals with a number operators including Inea, Multimedia Polska and UPC Polska.
The latter, beefing up its sports offer, has also just added the premium channel nSport+ to the line-up of its Horizon Go service.
However, if we look at the most popular sports channels in Poland, research published by Wirtualne Media shows that in January Polsat Sport, with a share of 0.82% among viewers aged 4+, was the undoubted market leader. Next up was Eurosport (0.69%), while nSport+ claimed only 0.03% and Orange Sport was in last place with 0.01%.
The Eleven Sports Network channels did not yet show up in the findings and it will be interesting to see how they perform once well established.
Meanwhile, sports TV viewers in the Czech Republic can from this month also watch Digi Sport 3 HD and Digi Sport 4 SD, which have until now been available only in Slovakia. Up until now, they had been offered the Digi Sport 1 and Digi Sport 2 channels from the Digi portfolio.
In Russia, the sports TV market has been shaken up by the launch of the free channel Match TV, using frequencies previously employed by VGRTK (RTR), late last year. Its operator Gazprom Media subsequently went on to launch no fewer than nine sports channels – Match! Our Sport, Match! Arena, Match! Game, Match! Fighter, Match! Planet, Match! Futbol 1, Match! Futbol 2 and Match! Futbol 3 – on January 25.
NTV-Plus, the Gazprom Media-owned DTH platform, rebranded its channels Futbol 1, Futbol 2 and Futbol 3 as Match! Futbol 1, Match! Futbol 2 and Match! Futbol 3 on the same day, while Tricolor TV is set to introduce a new football package, including the three Match! Football channels, on Monday, February 15.
These are certainly eventful times for sports channels in Central and Eastern Europe and we can expect more interesting developments, in several markets, in the near future.
