MUMBAI: Harish Thawani-promoted Nimbus Communications continues to trim down operations of its sports business. Neo Sports Broadcast, a subsidiary of Nimbus Communications, has sold off its US subsidiary Neo Broadcast America to Willow TV, the largest cricket broadcaster in US and Canada.

The move is part of a restructuring exercise in order to focus on Neo?s core market which is India and the subcontinent.

Neo Sports Broadcast COO Prasanna Krishnan confirmed the development to Indiantelevision.com without revealing the terms of the deal.

"We have sold our subsidiary company in US to Willow TV. We want to focus on the Indian subcontinent as it is the biggest market for us," says Prasanna.

Willow TV CEO Vijay Srinivasan was unavailable for comment till the time of filing this report.

Neo Broadcast America owns and operates Neo Cricket that was last year rebranded as Neo Prime. The rebranding was necessitated following the termination of Nimbus Sport?s broadcast rights agreement by the BCCI due to non-payment of licence fee.

Willow TV owns and operates an online cricket streaming platform besides a dedicated cricket channel called Willow Cricket, which is also the first cricket channel in US.

The acquisition will combine Willow TV?s strong content line-up with Neo Prime?s strong distribution. It will make Willow TV a big player in the US market by helping it plug loopholes in distribution.

The cricket broadcaster holds broadcast rights for almost all major cricket boards including BCCI, Cricket South Africa (CSA), England Cricket Board (ECB), Cricket Australia (CA), and New Zealand Cricket (NZC)

While, Neo Prime is a well-distributed channel and is available on major platforms like Dish Network, Comcast Xfinity, Optimum, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications.

Comparably, Willow TV?s own channel Willow Cricket is only available on DirecTV and Dish Network.

The presence of a sizeable diaspora from cricket playing countries including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and West Indies only makes the acquisition a lucrative proposition.

Neo Prime was launched in US in 2010 through a carriage deal with Comcast. Back then Neo had a strong driver property in BCCI to get distributed on US cable networks. However, the loss of BCCI rights made Neo vulnerable.

The broadcaster had tried to compensate the loss of BCCI rights by acquiring US telecast rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) last year.

Nimbus Sport, a sister concern of Neo Sports, distributes IPL internationally excluding some key territories like England, Australia and South Africa.

MUMBAI: Neo Cricket, the dedicated cricket channel from Neo Sports broadcast stable, will begin its journey as an all sports channel starting 3 June under the new name of Neo Prime amid intense competition from ESPN Star Sports, Zee?s Ten bouquet of channels and a new entrant Sony Six.

The channel is being built after its cricket content has depleted following the loss of the marquee India cricket rights. The sports broadcasting company has been mulling converting into an all sports channel for quite some time as it is left with only one cricket property, Asia Cup, ever since its contract with BCCI got terminated in December 2011. The Bangladesh Cricket Board rights also expired in April.

Neo Sports Broadcast has a good volume of non-cricket sports which it will distribute across its two-channel network. While Neo Prime will telecast mass sports including cricket, Neo Sports will cater to more niche and special interest products. Plans are also afloat to offer Neo Prime in High Definition.

"We have been planning on the rebranding before a couple of months but it goes through a process as we need Ministry of Information & Broadcasting?s approval which we got on Friday," Neo Sports Broadcast COO Prasanna Krishnan tells Indiantelevision.com.

Neo Sports Broadcast will focus on Football, Badminton, Tennis, Hockey and Golf to drive the growth of the two Neo channels.

In football, Neo has the rights for Copa America, German Bundesliga, Serie A and the crown jewel ? Uefa Euro 2012, the rights of which it acquired after forking out $11 million.

Hockey is another sport the broadcaster is betting big on. It had recently picked up the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup rights for five years. It also airs World Series Hockey, the franchise based hockey league co-promoted by sister concern Nimbus Sport.

Its tennis lineup comprises French Open, Davis Cup and Fed Cup while in golf it owns the rights to US PGA Tour, in addition to BWF Badminton Super Series in badminton.

"We couldn?t continue with the Neo Cricket name with the properties that we had. We had a lot of other sports content," Krishnan says.

Neo Cricket was logical when it had possession of the BCCI rights (which are now with Star India). Admits Krishnan, "Earlier on with the BCCI rights we always had enough of cricket including domestic cricket. So we needed a dedicated channel because of the volumes. But now in the current situation it makes more sense for us to become an all sports channel. We are also having the problem of scheduling particularly during the weekend wherein we had more content than we can could show at a point of time."

Prasanna also points out that other networks like Ten and ESS have channels in addition to cricket that can be used to air events in case of overlapping, something that was missing in Neo since it had only one all sports channel. "We are changing this with our rebranding."

ESPN Star Sports has two channels apart from a cricket channel. Similarly, Ten has Ten Action+ and Ten Golf. "We were having enough live content but were unable to utilise it. So it seemed to be a sensible strategy going forward," he explains.

The rebranding is timely as it precedes the 2012 Uefa European Football Championship, Neo?s biggest sporting property. Uefa Euro, hosted by Poland and Ukraine, will take place between 8 June and 1 July.

"We will do marketing campaigns to announce the rebranding. But we also have an advantage as it is happening in the middle of Uefa Euro which will attract a lot of viewers," says Prasanna.

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