''SportsCenter Asia'' (formerly ''Fox Sports Central'') is the flagship sports newscast broadcast on Fox Sports in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. As ESPN Star Sports ''SportsCenter'', there have been Malaysian and Indian editions of the programme.

History

A flagship sports newscast on

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

, ''SportsCenter Asia'' was based on the American counterpart, broadcast every weeknight at 7:30 p.m. for 30 minutes, with repeats at 10 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Hong Kong-time in Southeast Asia, (except in the Philippines where it was broadcast at 9:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m on delay) and at 8:30 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. across India, ''SportsCenter'' drew on the worldwide resources of

. ''SportsCenter Asia'' covered mostly football, but it also showed highlights of the NBA,

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baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

, and

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. ''SportsCenter Asia'' was officially launched on May 27, 2002, with

Jason Dasey Jason Dasey (born 11 April 1962) is an Australian-born TV and radio broadcaster, journalist, emcee and media executive working for Nine Radio as a radio host and ABC News as a digital journalist. He is best known for being the first Australian ...

as its original anchor. It was recognised as the region's number one show of its kind by winning the 'Best Sports Program' category at the 2003 Asian Television Awards and received a commendation for 'Best News Program' at the 2005 Asian Television Awards. Other past anchors of the program include Uday Joshi, Bethan Evans, Cheryl Liew, David Basheer and Arnold Gay. Former CNBC Asia correspondent

Colette Wong Colette Wong (born 21 May 1974) is a Singaporean sports reporter, TV host, and sports anchor for Fox Sports Asia and Fox Sports News Asia. She was formerly currently anchors '' Fox Sports Central Asia'' and a news correspondent for CNBC Asia. ...

became a co-anchor in March 2004 with Steve Dawson joining in late 2004, employed initially as an assistant producer. Dez Corkhill was the original executive producer and sometimes appeared on the show as a football pundit. ESPN International football commentator Dave Roberts returned to Singapore in late 2011 to take over as Senior Executive Producer for ''SportsCenter'' and other news and production programs before leaving in early 2015. Following

News Corporation News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...

's take over of

ESPN Star Sports Fox Sports (formerly ESPN Star Sports) was a pan-Asian pay television network broadcasting in Asia, operated by Fox Networks Group Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company (Southeast Asia) Pte. Ltd. It also oversaw a version of Sta ...

(which jointly operated ESPN and Star Sports in the region) in 2012, ESPN aired the last edition of first incarnation of ''SportsCenter Asia'' on 25 January 2013, and returned with the first edition as ''Fox Sports Central'' on 28 January, the day ESPN was relaunched as Fox Sports. Fox Sports in Taiwan used to produce a local edition in Mandarin Chinese from the studios in Taipei. On September 18, 2020, it was reported that programme would end after Disney announced that it would shut down Fox Sports operations in Taiwan at end of 2020. It was later revealed that operations in Taiwan would end on January 1, 2021 following years on losing money in the region. The revamped version and second incarnation of ''SportsCenter Asia'', launched on 26 January 2021, broadcasts every day on Disney's Fox Sports Asia networks.

Editions

Taiwan

The Taiwanese edition of ''Fox Sports Central'' (; a title kept from ''SportsCenter'' days) focused on local sports news and events in Taiwan, and the updates of athletes from Taiwan. Also, the program presented daily highlights of games which Fox Sports Taiwan had broadcasting rights.

Malaysia

A Malaysian version of ''SportsCenter'' was launched on April 30, 2007. Initially presented in English, ''SportsCenter Malaysia'' aired immediately before ''SportsCenter Asia'', from 7pm local time. It promised to focus more on local sports in Malaysia but instead repeated most of the same content seen on ''SportsCenter Asia'' with only a brief domestic sports section to keep costs down. For a short time, ''SportsCenter Malaysia'' used to be featured on all Southeast Asian versions of ESPN, before being limited to only been shown on ESPN in Malaysia. ''SportsCenter Malaysia'' had a Bahasa Malaysia version, which also repeated much of the same content shown on SportsCenter Asia. The Bahasa Malaysia program began on November 30, 2009 ahead of the launch of a Bahasa Malaysia competitor,

Astro Arena Astro Arena may refer to: * Astro Arena (Houston), now NRG Arena, a sports centre in Reliant Park, Houston, Texas *Astro Arena (TV channel) Astro Arena is a Malaysian television station owned and operated by Radio Televisyen Malaysia and Astr ...

, in March 2010. Former ''SportsCenter'' personalities

Rashid Salleh Rashid or Rachid ( ar, راشد ) and Rasheed ( ar, رشيد ), which means "rightly guided", may refer to: *Rashid (name), also Rachid and Rasheed, people with the given name or surname *Rached, a given name and surname * Rashad, a surname Pla ...

and

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soon departed from ESPN to join Astro, along with many technical and production staff. On December 9, 2010, the Malaysia office was informed that the operation would be soon closing down because of a lack of funding. Senior managers Huw Bevan and Sharon Van Zwieten, visiting from Singapore, read off a prepared script to dismiss each staff member, one-by-one. The final broadcast was eight days later on December 17, 2010.

India

Originally a Hindi-language show, ''Sportscenter India'' first aired in English on October 6, 2003. It switched back to Hindi on July 18, 2005, before being relaunched in English on April 28, 2007. ''Sportscenter India'' featured local Indian sporting news, such as the results of

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

matches and local football (I-League). ''Sportscenter India'' also covered league matches from European football and also some new from NBA. Other sports like Auto Racing, Multi-sporting events and all where India participated were covered in this news. Much of the content from ''SportsCenter Asia'' was also repeated in ''SportsCenter India''. The Indian edition was discontinued.

References