GECs
Star India’s sports push
KOLKATA: In a bid to expand its footprint beyond film, Star India’s Bengali movie channel, Jalsha, has acquired exclusive broadcast rights of two football events: the Calcutta Football League (CFL) and IFA Shield Tournament.
The CFL, which enjoys the distinction of being the oldest football league in Asia, will be broadcast live on Jalsha Movies starting 8 September, 4:00 pm onward. The upcoming season of the prestigious IFA tourney too will be aired with the aim of ushering a new era in Bengal’s much loved sport.
When contacted, business head Jalsha Movies Kevin Vaz confirmed the news and added, “The acquisition of broadcast rights of CFL and IFA Shield is a step towards ensuring an even more engaging relationship with our viewers. We are excited to partner with IFA in making CFL a bigger extravaganza and we will bring in expertise from our sports channels to create a state-of-the-art product.”
While on the subject of sports, highly placed industry sources told this correspondent that Star India plans to launch a Bengali sports channel.
“Star India is looking forward to working with sports authorities and boards, and making local Bengali sports like swimming, hockey and football popular,” a source revealed.
Apparently, Star India is looking to expand beyond cricket into sports such as hockey and kabaddi, and producing sports programming in regional languages is part of the plan. “The channels’ focus on sporting activities clearly indicates that Star India is betting on this segment for growth,” pointed out the source.
A sports analyst observed, “Star India aims to make sports the new religion, looking at the fact that there are 650 million cricket-crazed consumers in India. Knowing this, the entertainment channel has earmarked a huge investment in sports.”
The shows will be marketed through a multi-media campaign with effective use of television, print, out of home and digital. The marketing campaign is focused on innovations as it will help in creating the required noise in the markets and also establish the shows.
GECs
EPIC Company unifies all brands under single EPIC identity
IN10 Media rebrand aligns TV, digital and films into one ecosystem
MUMBAI: The EPIC Company, formerly known as IN10 Media Network, has announced a sweeping brand consolidation, bringing its television channels, digital platforms and content IPs under a single identity, EPIC.
The move is aimed at simplifying the company’s structure while creating a more connected content ecosystem spanning television, digital and films. By aligning multiple verticals under one umbrella, the company is looking to present a sharper, more cohesive face to both audiences and partners.
As part of the transition, several channels have been rebranded to align with the EPIC identity. EPIC will now operate as EPIC TV, while Nazara becomes EPIC Bharat, Filamchi is now EPIC Bhojpuri, Gubbare transitions to EPIC Kids, and ShowBox is reintroduced as EPIC Music. Ishara will continue under the identity EPIC Parivaar, maintaining its core positioning.
The company has also refreshed EPICON, its streaming platform, to reflect a more unified and modern brand experience. The overhaul is designed to improve content discovery and create a seamless experience across platforms.
This consolidation follows the recent launch of EPIC Studio, a unified production arm that brings together Juggernaut Productions and MovieVerse Studio, as the company expands its footprint across films, OTT and television.
The EPIC Company managing director Aditya Pittie said, “As our scale has grown, it has become important to simplify how we operate and how we present ourselves to the ecosystem. This consolidation gives us a clearer, more future-ready structure to partner, invest, and build at scale, while ensuring that for viewers, the experience is more seamless and intuitive.”
With the rebrand, The EPIC Company is positioning itself as a platform-agnostic content network, focused on scale, simplicity and integrated storytelling. By bringing everything under one banner, it is aiming to make its content universe easier to navigate and harder to ignore.
