India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati has added one more high-definition TV channel to its bouquet with DD Sports HD, which started with the telecast of the ongoing Asia Cup cricket matches.

This not only fulfils a long-standing demand of sports lovers across the country, but is another decisive step forward to make the entire Doordarshan Network relevant to the changing times, the government said in an official statement.

DD Sports HD will now become the preferred choice of the sports lovers as they’d be able to see the telecast of major international sporting events in HD transmission, the statement added.

In the coming months, DD Sports intends to come up with fresh content with a more consistent and robust publicity plan.

In recent months, DD Sports has launched several innovative and fresh approaches in terms of the presentation of the content. In the recently concluded India vs. West Indies international cricket series, Doordarshan Network came up with language feeds in Tamil, Kannada, Bangla, Telugu and Bhojpuri, apart from the commentary in Hindi and English.

The channel has also tied up with leading sports organisations like the NBA and PGTA, amongst others, to bring in fresh content on the channel.

According to the official statement, in the coming months more content tieups have been lined up that have a synergy with the sports channel’s overall programming plans aimed aimed to make it one of the leading TV channels in the sports genre.

DD Sports was launched on March 18, 1998. In the beginning, it broadcast sports programming for six hours a day, which was increased to 12 hours in 1999. From June 1, 2000, DD Sports became a round the clock satellite TV channel.

With the decision to launch DD Sports HD now, the channel aims to be a one stop destination for major international sporting events and grassroots transformative events like Khelo India Games, winter games and games for divyang (specially-abled people), amongst others.