International Hockey Federation (FIH) Media Partner Star Sports have played a crucial role in driving growth of domestic, regional and continental hockey coverage in recent months, thanks to a substantial increase in the quality and the amount of hockey being broadcast globally.
Over the past year Star Sports have been working hard to improve the quality of hockey coverage, both directly at the Hockey World League Semi-Finals in Spain and Belgium and at the men's Hero Hockey World League Final in India, and by working closely with host broadcasters Canal Siete in Argentina and BT Sport in Great Britain.
With improved production they have also been successful in providing rights to many more territories, substantially increasing the availability of hockey to people across the world. As a direct consequence, collaborative working has dramatically increased the quality of hockey broadcasting and its distribution globally.
This has in turn inspired other FIH National Associations and Continental Federations to invest in production of their hockey events.
One great example is the European Hockey Federation (EHF) who has increased coverage of their events considerably within the last six months. In January they announced the launch of a live streaming project which saw matches from the EuroHockey Nations Indoor Championship broadcast live from Prague (Czech Republic), Espinho (Portugal) and Vantaa (Finland) from 15-17 January on the FIH YouTube channel. Since then they have also broadcast from several other events from nations across Europe, the most recent the EuroHockey Youth Championships Semi-Finals in Ireland and Scotland.
This gives an indication of the growing interest in hockey, helped by constantly evolving technology which offers a range of solutions now available to event hosts.
As a result several Hockey World League Round 1 events are now broadcasting from their venues. The men's and women's competitions in Singapore were one of the first Hockey World League Round 1 events to be broadcast this year, back in April. Later in the year Turkey, Scotland and Peru will also broadcast their Hockey World League Round 1 events.
In addition to this success, hockey events are being broadcast by many more FIH National Associations within their own countries, with more and more being covered week by week.
This increased coverage is a clear sign that the sport is growing across all levels, a key component of the Hockey Revolution strategy. This is very much in part down to the hard work that FIH Media Partner Star Sports is undertaking at the top level, and all of the Continental Federations and National Associations who are investing a considerable amount of time and resource into growing the game through this median.
