ONE World Sports, America’s Network for Global Sports, and RCN, an industry-leading provider of high-speed Internet, digital TV and phone services, today announced a multiyear, multiplatform agreement. As part of this deal, ONE World Sports will be available beginning December 16, 2014, to current and new RCN Digital TV subscribers on the Premiere Sports Tier, SD channel 393 and HD channel 571 in the New York market and in most other areas in the RCN footprint.
Offering viewers multiple ways to view sports programming, the new agreement provides RCN customers in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley with more than 3,000 hours annually of exclusive sporting events. The exciting line up of global programming includes baseball from Japan, basketball from China, cricket from England, ice hockey from Europe and Russia and golf and soccer from around the world.
The partnership will also expand the availability of coverage to fans of the New York Cosmos, the 2013 North American Soccer League champions. ONE World Sports is the Cosmos’ television home, and is the exclusive U.S. TV home of the soccer clubs Arsenal FC TV, Chelsea FC TV and FC Bayern Munich TV. In January 2015, the network will also carry live, exclusively in the United States, the AFC Asian Cup, an international soccer tournament.
“Global sports programming such as that provided by ONE World Sports appeals to our diverse customer base whose appetite for sports extends across the globe,” said Chris Fenger, RCN executive vice president & chief operating officer. “Like RCN, ONE World Sports is an independent provider nimble enough to target a diverse audience segment with a strong emphasis on delivering high quality content. More and more people are showing interest in international sports offered by ONE World Sports, and we are excited to make these events available to our viewers.”
“Our agreement with RCN gives us an additional foothold in the New York market, where we’re seeing particularly strong demand, as well as an entrance to other key top-10 markets,” said Randy Brown, executive vice president of distribution of ONE World Sports. “In fact, all of RCN’s markets, spanning the East from Boston to Virginia, plus west to Chicago, present an excellent opportunity for our network, since our research shows that these regions demonstrate a solid fan interest in soccer and other global sports.”
