The pay television network, SPOTV has obtained the exclusive television and digital rights of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) for 12 Asian territories. It is a five-year collaboration wherein the network will cover major BWF tournaments such as HSBC BWF World Tour and TotalEnergies BWF Major Championships. The deal commenced last week with the airing of the YONEX-SUNRISE India Open 2022.
The deal was facilitated by the BWF’s broadcast partner, Infront, the firm can provide live coverage of the badminton tournament. The territories are Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Macau, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam.
While claiming this association as the game-changer for the sport of badminton, Secretary-General of BWF, Thomas Lund said, “We are excited to welcome Eclat Media Group to the BWF family, and we look forward to seeing many hours of badminton being broadcast on SPOTV for the next five years. The partnership offers fans in these 12 territories unprecedented opportunity to watch and engage with more badminton, more regularly as we look to strengthen the sport’s popularity in the region.”
Mitchell Hong, the Chairman of SPOTV and CEO of Eclat Media Group also gave his insights on the deal and said, “Badminton has a long-standing presence in the region with top shuttlers and homegrown champions from Asia taking centre stage in recent years. Eclat is proud to include the BWF World Tour and BWF Major Championships as part of SPOTV’s programming slate, as it endeavours to bring world-class premium sports content to fans in Asia.”
SPOTV is managed by its parent company, Eclat Media Group. The booming media unit aims to become the leading sports broadcasting distributor across Southeast Asia and key North Asian cities post the shutdown of Fox Sports Asia. The firm also contains the broadcasting rights of several notable tournaments like Wimbledon, the US Open and the motorsport competition MotoGP.