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Star India, Claro agree multi-year Formula E broadcast deals
Formula E, the electric car racing championship, has agreed a multi-year deal with pay-television broadcaster Star India for rights to the series across the Indian subcontinent.
News of the deal with Star was quickly followed by the announcement that telco Claro has secured rights across Latin America, also in a “multi-year” agreement.
Star Sports will broadcast the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives. In addition to live coverage, Star will show highlights and other related programmes, including a 30-minute live build-up show prior to each race.
Formula E qualifying and races will also be available on OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar.
The championship features Indian manufacturer and team Mahindra Racing, which was one of the ten founding members of Formula E in 2014.
The racing championship, which is in its seventh season, confirmed this year’s calendar yesterday (Thursday), with the DHL Valencia E-Prix taking place this weekend.
Disney+ Hotstar will show all of this weekend’s qualifying and race sessions live, including a specific Indian race feed.
Aarti Dabas, chief media officer of Formula E, said: “Star, including Disney+ Hotstar, is the leading sports and entertainment platform across the Indian subcontinent, which has revolutionised the way sports are consumed in India across different genres of content.
“It is also a platform that delivers important messaging of inclusion and sustainability through its diverse programming. I am confident that through its bespoke content approach focused on the Indian fans, this new partnership will engage more people in the most unpredictable racing series in the world, its world-class drivers and Formula E’s vision to accelerate sustainable human progress through the power of electric racing.”
Dilbagh Gill, chief executive officer and team principal of Mahindra Racing, added: “We know that sports fans across India love to get behind their national teams, and now we will be able to bring edge-of-the-seat, unpredictable electric street racing to many more homes across the sub-continent. We look forward to bringing viewers exclusive content from the very heart of the action and to delivering on track results across the season to make our fans proud.”
Star India also holds Formula 1 rights until 2022.
Claro comes on board
Pay-television broadcaster Claro Sports is to broadcast all races and qualifying sessions with coverage also shown on streaming platform Claro Video and the marcaclaro.com website. Three highlights programmes in the week after each race will also be broadcast.
Claro Sports is to provide localised Spanish-language commentary of the races in a bid to generate more local appeal. There will be particular local interest in the inaugural Puebla E-Prix in Mexico.
Along with Mexico, the deal covers Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
Claro Sports and Marca, the Spanish media group, entered into a content alliance at the start of 2017 and with the aim of becoming the regional reference point for sports news. SportBusiness
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