Sony Ten 1 Channel
Sony Ten is a group of Indian pay television sports channels owned by Culver Max Entertainment. It broadcasts cricket, football, golf, basketball, tennis, MMA and professional wrestling events. It is a part of Sony Pictures Sports Network.
It broadcasts the events of World Athletics Championships, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and Sukma Games. Its programming schedule includes live coverage of tennis, rallying, horse racing, beach volleyball events and basketball. WWE Raw (with a 30-minute pre-show) and WWE SmackDown currently air weekly live, along with NXT, Main Event, WWE Sunday Nightmare and (usually) monthly pay-per-view specials.
In January 2001, Taj Television Limited was formed in Dubai with Abdul Rehman Bukhatir of the Sharjah-based Cricketers Benefit Fund. The company launched the channel Ten Sports (as part of its Taj Entertainment Network) on 1 April 2002.
In 2006, Essel Group acquired Taj Television Limited and made it a part of Zee Entertainment Entertainment Enterprises. However, the rights for Ten Sports in Pakistan were transferred to a company called Tower Two (Tower Sports Pvt. Ltd.), another Essel Group subsidiary.
In 2010, Zee rebranded another of its sports channels, Zee Sports as Ten Action which features adventure sports and non-cricket content. In 2011 Zee Ten launched a new channel called Cricket, exclusively for cricket matches. In March 2016, all channels of Zee Network were rebranded as Ten1, Ten2 and Ten3 respectively.
In August 2016, Sony Pictures Networks India acquired all sports channels under Zee from Essel. The deal was signed in September 2016 and the acquisition was planned to be in two phases. Sony acquired control of Zee-owned Indian sports channels with the completion of the first phase of the purchase, which was completed in February 2017. With the completion of the second phase, Sony gained access to the remaining sports properties owned by G in September 2017.
On 18 July 2017, in addition to the launch of HD simulcasts, the sports channels were rebranded under the Sony umbrella by adding “Sony” as a prefix.