Viacom18 partners with SFA to telecast school sports events

The SFA Championships aim to provide a platform for young athletes, with an ambitious plan to conduct 150 championships in 50 cities over the next five years.

Viacom 18, part of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd., has partnered with sports enterprise Sports For All (SFA) to broadcast school-level sports competitions on television and digital platforms. The SFA Championships will be available on Jio Cinema, Sports 18 – 2, and Sports 18 Khel starting 3 December, making grassroots-level sports widely accessible in India.

“We endeavour to continue spotlighting school-level talent by including SFA Championships in our portfolio,” said Siddharth Sharma, head of content, TV and Digital, Viacom 18 Sports, in a statement.

The SFA Championships aim to provide a platform for young athletes, with an ambitious plan to conduct 150 championships in 50 cities over the next five years. SFA’s immediate goal is to engage 200,000 athletes in 10 championships within four months for the 2023-24 season.

“…The SFA Championships entail an international sporting experience through equitable access to world-class infrastructure, match videos, analytics and insights for school athletes. Every episode will showcase that city’s energy and sporting talent, their trials and tribulations and how every athlete contributes to identifying the ‘number one school in sports’, for their city,” Vishwas Choksi and Rishikesh Joshi, founders, said in a statement.

For the 23-24 season, the championships will be held in cities such as Indore, Jaipur, Dehradun, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Nagpur, Delhi, and Ahmedabad. This collaboration furthers SFA’s mission to democratize sports access at the school level.

SFA also holds the title of ‘official partner’ to the Indian Olympic Association and ‘official sponsor’ for the Khelo India Youth Games for the next five years.

Earlier this month, SFA expanded its international footprint through a partnership with Playfly Sports, a US-based sports media, marketing, and technology company. Playfly will engage corporate sponsors to support the SFA Championships, drawing on its experience with multimedia rights and sponsorships in US high school sports. This tie-up aims to enhance SFA’s sponsorship platform and create new revenue channels, building on its network of over 5,000 schools across India. LiveMint