In the second half of the 1980s, in my teens, I fixed this slogan my head: “The Channel of Sport”. It was the one used by Bandeirantes, whose main figure was the late narrator Luciano do Valle (1947-2014), in his sports broadcasts.
Pay TV crawled in the country, and the station based in the São Paulo neighborhood of Morumbi offered on channel 13 (open), on Sundays, from 10am to 8pm, a program totally dedicated to the sport: there was football (Italian championship), basketball, motoring, tennis, volleyball, boxing … and even pool (with Rui hat challenging the British Steve Davis).
The sports show was the nearest that Brazilian open TV managed to arrive from a continuous and varied sectorized programming, totally free.
Behold, now, less than a month ago, it went on, tuned in São Paulo on channel 32 and other numbers in other squares, Xsports, owned by Kalunga stores. It is a network that offers sports on open TV 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
What is good there? For me, whose interest is international football, the menu offer (few) English championship games, the Spanish championship, the Italian championship, the German Championship. Some are flashy: there was Bayern, there was Arsenal.
There was also Orlando (from Marta) in the US League, Women’s Premier League, Portuguese Championship, Japanese Championship. And National Cups (Germany, Argentina).
The menu is not bad, and there is a heavy narrator (Milton Leite, former-SEPN Brazil and SporTV) and a well-known commentator (Mauro Beting, a former mound of channels).
Apart from football, Xsports has exhibited so far, mentioning what I saw, motorsport (Nascar) and women’s tennis. There is athletics in programming and the nothing attractive triathlon and skiing. Minimal seduction.
To spend 24 hours of sports, not everything will be interesting, much less live – the Sunday Sport Show broadcast almost everything live at its peak.
Since Xsports does not produce content, there is no round tables and its transmission rights are limited (ESPN sublicenses), to take up the grid space there are reruns of games and a variety of special programs.
One of them, called Ultime Clash (in the line “Who is the best?”), Is dated. I saw an episode that compares Messi and Maradona, with the victory of the second, noting that the Pibe de Oro won the 1986 World Cup. But the comparison was made before Argentina triumph at the 2022 World Cup. Then I wanted to hang up. And I hung up.
Anyway, even with imperfections, the attempted Xsports is commendable. There has never been anything like that in this model in Brazil.
In its incipient, and although the overall programming does not dazzle everyone, it is better to have a 100% sport, at no cost, than not having it and need to sign cable TV for access to specialized channels (such as SporTV and ESPN) or hunting on traditional broadcasters (Globo, Band, SBT, Record) a rare game.
Only time will say if Xsports will “take” at an audience, be sustainable (with the advent of advertisers) and have continuity.
To the column the network advice said that it has, to be able to prosper, “the back of a strong business group, with a history of execution and delivery, and a responsible management and long -term vision.” Is it enough?
What you can say for sure is that Xsports is to the letter, without disregarding everything Band has done and effectively does “the sports channel”.
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