Hong Kong-based
Star TV launched Prime Sports (later renamed Star Sports) in partnership with American company
TCI, which owned
Prime-branded regional sports channels. The channel was broadcast across Asia, including India, as with the footprint of
AsiaSat 7. Star TV has since regionalized the channel with several versions. Later, ESPN joined the region as a competitor to Star Sports. In October 1996, Star Sports announced an agreement to merge its operations with those of
ESPN International in the region, forming a Singapore-based joint venture known as
ESPN Star Sports. In June 2012, it was announced that Star TV, by then owned by
News Corporation, would acquire ESPN's share in ESPN Star Sports. The sale was completed in January 2013. On 11 March 2013, Star Sports 2, a Hindi-language sports channel, was launched as a sister channel to Star Sports, Star Cricket and ESPN. On 6 November 2013, Star Sports introduced a new brand identity and re-aligned its channels in India; Star Sports became Star Sports 1; Star Cricket became Star Sports 3, a Hindi language channel; ESPN became Star Sports 4 and on 28 May 2017 Star Sports 4 became Star Sports 1 Tamil a Tamil language Sports channel, and Star Cricket HD and ESPN HD became Star Sports HD1 and HD2 respectively. In Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, the ESPN Star Sports channels were relaunched by
Fox International Channels Asia Pacific as
Fox Sports. ESPN International later established a partnership with
Multi-Screen Media in October 2015, which rebranded Sony Kix as
Sony ESPN in January 2016. Star India planned to replace the troubled
Channel V with Star Sports 1 Kannada on 16 November 2017, but the delay in regulatory approval meant the plan was postponed. Later, Star India replaced Channel V into the current iteration of Star Sports 3 on 15 September 2018, and launched Star Sports 1 Telugu and Star Sports 1 Kannada as new channels on 7 and 29 December 2018, respectively. In the meantime, Kannada commentary of Star Sports' coverage of the
Indian Premier League was broadcast on
Star Suvarna.
21st Century Fox was acquired by Disney on 19 March 2019, giving it ownership of Star Sports. Ahead of the
2023 Indian Premier League—whose streaming rights would now be owned by
JioCinema—Star Sports announced that it would launch feeds of Star Sports 1 Tamil and Telugu in HD on 15 March 2023. Concurrently, the Bangla and Marathi feeds were discontinued. In June 2023, in response to JioCinema's decision to stream every IPL 2023 match for free, Star Sports and Disney+ Hotstar announced that the
2023 Asia Cup and
2023 Men's Cricket World Cup would stream for free on mobile devices. == Channels ==