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Type | Sports |
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Country | Pakistan |
Broadcast area | Pakistan Central Asia China Hong Kong Laos Macau Mongolia Myanmar South Asia Western Asia Middle East North America Africa |
Network | Pakistan Television Corporation |
Headquarters | Islamabad, Pakistan |
Programming | |
Language(s) |
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Picture format | 1080p, MPEG-4, 16:9, HDTV) |
Ownership | |
Owner | Government of Pakistan |
Sister channels | |
History | |
Launched |
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PTV Sports HD is a 24-hour state-owned sports channel operated by the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV).[1][2][3]
PTV Sports was founded as a sports division of the PTV in the 1970s. It was licensed as a stand-alone sports channel in January 2012.[4] It broadcasts cricket, football, hockey, snooker, and tennis events in Pakistan.[5][6][7][8][9][10]
Since becoming a PTV division in the 1970s, PTV Sports has faced multiple disputes over broadcast rights.[11]
In 2003, a dispute occurred when the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) awarded the broadcasting rights for a Pakistan-New Zealand series to Geo TV via a competitive bidding process.[11] PTV Sports challenged the process's fairness, leading to intervention by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) which resulted in Geo TV being denied uplink permissions, and the first One Day International (ODI) in Lahore was not televised.[11] This was the first incident since 2007 that a international cricket match of Pakistan national cricket team was not broadcast in Pakistan.[11] The conflict was resolved when the President of Pakistan, also serving as PCB's patron-in-chief, facilitated a joint broadcast agreement for the subsequent matches.[11]
PTV Sports has also faced challenges securing broadcast rights for cricket events due to financial constraints or limited commercial interest.[11] Notably, PTV Sports did not broadcast the 2007 ICC World Twenty20, the 2009 Pakistan-Australia Test series, and the 2013 cricket series against Sri Lanka and South Africa, all hosted in the United Arab Emirates.[11] The Senate Committee on Information and Broadcasting criticized these omissions.[11][12] To address public access issues, the PCB now requires successful broadcasting rights bidders to share the feed with PTV at a set price.[11]
On January 11, 2012, PTV Sports was licensed as a stand-alone satellite-based 24-hour sports channel.[11]