The Programming Line-Up

Any sports broadcast, be it cricket or hockey or football, depends heavily on analysis to hook in viewers. For this purpose, ESS has established an enriched studio panel of presenters for the football World Cup.

These commentators will offer different perspectives on the goings on at the World Cup and leading up to the spectacle when it begins in June. Gerry Armstrong, former Irish international and now a soccer expert with ESS, Steve McMahon, former England and Liverpool player and an ESS presenter and Harsha Bhogle will handle the presentation.

For those looking for a desi or local touch, the broadcaster will also have Indian soccer experts like Novy Kapadia, Noel Da Kima Leitao as guests every week during the event.

On the ground in Germany, the broadcaster will have two dedicated teams comprising Anand Narsimhan, Dave Roberts and Jason Dasey, who will capture the World Cup craze. Additionally, a special Indian ESS production team will travel across India to catch the enthusiasm.

Of course, the specials have already been flagged off in a bid to build up viewer interest leading up to June. One such initiative last month was Fifa World Cup Stories. Six episodes of half an hour duration provided different angles to chapters of the event.

The show featured stories on the most surprising and shocking results in the World Cups, Golden Boot winners of the previous editions, dramatic penalty shoot outs, young stars of the sport and rise to top of some of the underdogs.

Born To Play, airing Mondays to Fridays till early May, was a series on some of the best soccer stars the world has witnessed. The 13-episode series brought alive the magical moments from World Cup performances of Pele, Maradona, Baggio, Platini, Beckenbauer and others.

Fifa Preview, a 16-spisode series running from 3-24 May is another programming initiative.

Running Mondays to Fridays, this previews the 2006 Fifa World Cup Germany through exciting blend of originally shot footage from qualifiers and other innovative feature based content.

The series will bring to life the football-ing passion and current form of all qualified nations. The series will profile stars, coaches and will also analyse each nation's prospects against teams within their groups.

Some other programming line-up include the six-episode Fifa Stories, Fifa Official Films (13 episodes till 19 May) that will ferret out films from the Fifa archive to research fascinating histories of the some of the most successful nations in World Cup football.

Local feed: Another strategy that sports channels are following is having feed in Hindi for special events. ESS is no exception.

To cater to the Hindi speaking markets, ESS will have a special Hindi feed. This will help ESS broad base the appeal of soccer for those who do not understand English and for those who might have difficulty following the accents of ESS' foreign experts.

The sponsors on ESPN and Star Sports, including Fifa global associates, include Coca Cola India (presenting sponsor) Bharti 'Airtel' Cellular (joint presenting sponsor), Adidas India (associate sponsor), Mirc Electronics (associate sponsor) and IOC (associate sponsor).