MUMBAI: ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has announced the addition of two new channels, bringing its total number of services in Asia to 11.

The two channels ESPN Singapore and Star Sports Singapore will air throughout the day. With that, ESPN has six services in Asia while Star Sports has five.

Others Asian ESS channels include, ESPN Asia, ESPN India, ESPN Taiwan, ESPN Philippines, MBC-ESPN (Korea), Star Sports Asia, Star Sports India, Star Sports Taiwan and Star Sports Southeast Asia.

According to an official release, ESS' managing director Rik Dovey says, "This is part of our customisation strategy to bring our brands closer to our viewers. Having dedicated commercial streams featuring local advertisers, will also enhance ESPN's and Star Sports' relevance in Singapore. We have done this in India and Taiwan and the returns, in terms of brand equity and consumer loyalty, are very apparent. This shows the importance we place on Singapore as a key TV market."

The release adds that ESS programming has continued to rank top among cable channels in Singapore. Peoplemeter data showed a single English Premier League match on ESPN and Star Sports rating up to 10 times more than the best programme on other cable channels. It also reaches 167 per cent more viewers than all the cable news channels put together.

Other peoplemeter data showed that 51 per cent of all cable individuals watched SportsCenter Asia,. The number jumped to 54 per cent among professionals, managers, executives and businessmen - way ahead of the competing sports news programmes on other news channels.