DD SPORTS

In the stands, a game of cricket is a day away from work, home or friends cheering or booing or, worse, helpless, despondent watchers of their favourite team going down without even so much as a fight.

It’s another story on television – viewers watch their favourite sport from the eye of the most discerning person on the field, the referee or the umpire or the goalie, the team captain, batsman or the bowler. And they watch it again as no one on the field or the stands does – in replays, seeing every move of the finger-tip, the arc of the ball, the underwater skills of the swimmer or the gymnasts’ artistic twists and somersaults.

Sports is telegenic and that is the mantra at DD Sports, bringing it up close and making it personal.

As TV changes sports, DD Sports brings viewers a side beyond the ring-side, helping recreate sports by showing and magnifying the personal struggles of the people the world adores – a young girls fight patriarchy on the wrestling mat or an athlete run with his heart wrenching with sad news back home or an archer from a tribal village competing with the best in the world.

DD Sports uses the power of television to give a real image to the fascinating stories behind the scenes, deep in the hearts of sportspeople, through visuals of their sweating foreheads, excited eyes and animated voices. The channel gives viewers a peep inside the lives of sportspeople, their families and even their minds, adding to the charisma of sports beyond just the performance.

DD Sports speeds up the action, maximises the dramatic moments and enhances the competition.

Beyond the scores – replayed and close-up.

We understand that viewers want it all – at timings that suit them, with time delays, repeat telecasts and the highlights. The team at DD Sports also understands that this heightens expectation and demand and even change of the rules of the game we play on the channel – broadcasting while constantly innovating.

Sports coverage at Doordarshan shows players, fans, referees, third umpires and even managers and officials close-up, rather than as pawns jostling for position on a faraway field, making all of them characters in an event beyond the sport itself. Colours pop on the field and in the stands alike.
Besides showing live sporting events like cricket, football, and tennis, DD Sports also gives a place of pride to Indian sports like kabaddi and kho-kho, adding to the contrast of sporting events from around the world and showcasing to the world India’s own culture of sports like the bullock-cart race held in the annual Kila Raipur Sports festival – the rural Olympic from Punjab.

And Oh! The Sports channel also telecasts sports quiz and news-based programmes.

Beyond all that, DD Sports strives to inspire young people to participate in sports, thanks to its free-to-air platform that reaches 38 countries across the world through the INSAT-4B satellite, around the clock since the New Delhi Commonwealth Games in June, 2000.