Città Italia Sport goes live with comprehensive sports coverage
Formerly a ‘niche’ Italian TV channel known as Città Italia and viewable on Sky (ch 820) and TivùSat (ch 57), the newly revamped Città Italia Sport is one of the few sports-dedicated channels in the TivùSat platform.
“The main objective now is to make sure that the channel is being seen [by as many people as possible,” says Carmine Calabrese, chief manager of the channel, who believes that the new ‘incarnation’ represents an important step forward. “Città Italia was a thematic channel for many. Città Italia Sport is a thematic channel for everyone.”
The channel is seeking to cover a wide variety of sports, ranging from football to Formula 1. There will also be extensive space given to sports people at a variety of levels – not just celebrated professionals, but minor league players too. This wide-ranging content will be made possible by collaboration with associations, sports federations and other key stakeholders. There will also be in-house-made programmes, devised and created by Calabrese and his team.
Explaining the change in branding, Calabrese remarks: “At the end of July 2015 we decided to offer a much wider and more varied schedule, transforming us from a niche thematic channel dedicated to ‘Made in Italy’ towards sports and becoming a popular channel. In a short time, we’ve gone from five to twenty-five programmes, offering viewers a much richer viewing experience. We can already say, in the light of the [viewer feedback], that we are seeing the choice was [a happy one] from all points of view.”
Representing a world of sport
Città Italia Sport is following events of a national dimension, but also dealing with local events in detail too. Soccer, tennis, volleyball, cycling, motor-racing, water sports, triathlon, outdoor sports, wrestling, go-kart and more are all being covered.
An agreement with ACI (Automobile Club Italy) allows the channel to show highlights from the Italian motorsport championships. The broadcaster also has significant partnerships with G.T.O. 2000 Floriano Omoboni and Este News, among others, while external provider Go TV Production supplies programmes including ‘Go Cartv’ and ‘Race on TV’. There is also coverage of the best of Italian wrestling thanks to an agreement with Emilio Bernocchi, president of the Federation Italian Championship Wrestling.
Calabrese concludes: “We are [intent on] continuously proposing new and interesting content. Fortunately [advances in technology] allows us to expand our possibilities within the same organisational structure, and to be able to continue innovating without automatically incurring extra costs.”
Città Italia Sport’s core technical infrastructure includes SI Media software for playout.