25 February 2010, Bangkok: Asia’s biggest sports content provider, ESPN STAR Sports, announced today its multi-year regional television broadcast partnership to showcase the new OneAsia golf series, Asia Pacific's first consolidated professional tournament pathway for elite golfers.

The partnership comprises an exclusive five-year television agreement to showcase LIVE coverage of OneAsia events across 24 territories across ESPN STAR Sports’ regional footprint in 2010. Golf fans can look forward to catching a growing calendar of golf events on ESPN STAR Sport comprising OneAsia tournaments, which will increase to 23 golf tournaments in 2014. In addition, enthusiasts can also look forward to daily LIVE broadcasts of all OneAsia tournaments and coverage on ESPN STAR Sports’ news programmes SportsCenter and Score Tonight and weekly magazine show Golf Focus.

"We are delighted to welcome ESPN STAR Sports as our broadcast partner for the next five years," said OneAsia Chief Executive, Ben Sellenger. "Their commitment to professional golf, as well as their unparalleled platform for showcasing sport across the Asia-Pacific, makes them an ideal partner to grow our events with LIVE, enhanced and focused TV coverage. ESPN STAR Sports’ extensive reach across the region will play a key role in our end goal to maximize elite playing opportunities for Asia-Pacific's finest."

Said ESPN STAR Sports’ Craig Dobbs, Executive Vice President, Programming and Production, “The OneAsia series comprises some of the biggest golf tournaments across the region, and we’re pleased to showcase this new premium golf series across Asia. The Asia-Pacific region continues to be a robust market for golf and this exciting partnership underscores our commitment to serve golf fans and deliver quality programming to our viewers.

“The OneAsia series adds to a stellar list of golf events on ESPN STAR Sports including golf majors such as The Masters, US Open and The Open Championships well as the PGA Grand Slam of Golf and PGA Euro Pro Tour.”

The OneAsia tournament schedule has grown to 11 confirmed events after its first year, with most of the events scheduled in 2010 offering a minimum purse of US$1 million. Of the current list of events, ten remain full field OneAsia tournaments purely for the leading golfers in the region, providing players with an alternative pathway to the PGA Tour and the European Tour.

The OneAsia season will kick off at the Luxehills Chengdu Open in Chengdu on 1 April. Kindly refer to the current tournament schedule in 2010, below:

About ESPN STAR Sports
ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world’s leading cable and satellite broadcasters. As Asia's definitive and complete sports broadcaster and content provider, ESPN STAR Sports combines the strengths and resources of its ultimate parent companies – Walt Disney (ESPN, Inc.) and News Corporation Limited (STAR) – to deliver a diverse array of international and regional sports to viewers via its encrypted pay-TV services.
 
ESPN STAR Sports showcases an unparalleled variety of premier live sports from around the globe 24 hours a day to a cumulative reach of over 300 million viewers in Asia. ESPN STAR Sports has 18 networks covering 24 countries, each localised to deliver differentiated world-class premier sports programming to Asian viewers. This includes ESPN SEA, ESPN China, ESPN Hong Kong, ESPN India, ESPN Malaysia, ESPN Philippines, ESPN SEA 2, ESPN Taiwan, MBC-ESPN (Korea), STAR Sports Asia, STAR Sports Hong Kong, STAR Sports India, STAR Sports Malaysia, STAR Sports SEA, STAR Sports SEA 2, STAR Sports Taiwan, STAR Cricket and ESPNEWS.
 
On the ground, the ESPN STAR Sports Event Management Group manages and promotes premier sporting events around Asia. ESPN STAR Sports aims to reach consumers at any time, any place and through all new media platforms, both internet and mobile. The multi-lingual, online platforms, espnstar.com, espnstar.com.cn and espnstar.com.tw interact with millions of users providing them with in-depth sports news, results and competitions. Developed for the sports fan that is constantly on the move, mobileESPN enables the serious sports fan to follow their favourite sports more closely than ever before with a combination of specially produced video news clips, in-depth news coverage and analysis.

About OneAsia
OneAsia is a non-profit organisation developed to maximize elite tournament opportunities in Asia-Pacific. The Founding members of OneAsia are the China Golf Association, the Korea Golf Tour, the Korea Golf Association and the PGA of Australia. The mission of OneAsia is not just  to allow the region's best players to gain access to more events, but to ultimately provide them with an alternative pathway to the PGA Tour and the European Tour, thus retaining the best golfing talent in the region without compromising their development.


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