ESPN International


ESPN International is a family of sportscasting and production networks around the world. It was begun in 1983, is operated by ESPN Inc., which is jointly owned by The Walt Disney Company, Hearst Communications, and the National Football League.

Current operations

Canada

ESPN International does not directly operate its own channels in Canada, but owns a 20 percent voting interest in CTV Specialty Television, a subsidiary of the Canadian media company Bell Media. Canadian regulations on the foreign ownership of broadcasters prohibit ESPN from acquiring majority interest.
Although these channels have retained their local brands, they adopted ESPN-style logos in 2001, and use other ESPN branding elements such as the SportsCentre title for TSN's sports highlights programs. CTV Specialty also operated a Canadian version of ESPN Classic from 2001 to 2023.
Through CTV Specialty, ESPN also has an indirect interest in the Canadian version of USA Network and several CTV-branded factual channels. These holdings, all operated in association with Warner Bros. Discovery until December 2024, date to CTV Specialty's previous incarnations as Labatt Communications and later as NetStar Communications, in which ESPN also held a minority interest. Disney/ESPN is not believed to have any direct involvement with these channels, two of which compete directly with Disney's National Geographic brand which is separately licensed to Corus Entertainment in Canada. However, after rebranding in 2025, USA Network began airing some overflow sports programming sublicensed from TSN.
ESPN is also indirectly associated with TSN Radio, a brand used by several sports radio stations, each of which also carries a limited amount of ESPN Radio programming.

Spanish-speaking countries

  • ESPN North
  • ESPN South
  • ESPN2 North
  • ESPN2 South
  • ESPN3 North
  • ESPN3 South
  • ESPN4 North
  • ESPN4 South
  • ESPN5 Central America
  • ESPN5 South
  • ESPN6
  • ESPN7
  • ESPN Premium

    Brazil

  • ESPN
  • ESPN2
  • ESPN3
  • ESPN4
  • ESPN5
  • ESPN6

    Caribbean

  • ESPN
  • ESPN2
  • ESPN Extra

    Netherlands

  • ESPN
  • ESPN2
  • ESPN3
  • ESPN4
  • ESPN Ultra HD

    Oceania

  • ESPN
  • ESPN2

    Sub-Saharan Africa

  • ESPN
  • ESPN2

    Japan

  • J Sports

    Former operations

Asia-Pacific

In June 2012, News Corporation announced it would acquire ESPN's 50% stake in its joint venture ESPN Star Sports. Following the takeover, ESPN in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia was relaunched as Fox Sports in January 2013, while a version for Mainland China became Star Sports 2 in January 2014.
In January 2013, Star India acquired ESPN India from ESPN Star Sports, but kept ESPN brand for a while. ESPN International later established a partnership with what is now Sony Pictures Networks India in October 2015, and relaunched Sony Kix as Sony ESPN in January 2016. Sony ESPN was shut down in March 2020.
  • ESPN India
  • Sony ESPN
  • Sony ESPN HD

    Philippines

  • ESPN5

    United Kingdom

ESPN launched ESPN Classic in 2006. The company bought the North American Sports Network in 2007, and renamed it ESPN America in 2009. Also in 2009, it launched the domestic network ESPN UK after securing rights to the Premier League.
In February 2013, BT Group acquired ESPN's UK and Ireland television channel and remaining broadcasting contracts. Its domestic channel was re-branded as BT Sport ESPN, integrating it with the company's BT Sport channel group. In January 2015, BT Sport and ESPN reached a seven-year agreement to continue licensing ESPN's brand for the channel, as well as British rights to ESPN original programming and events whose international rights were owned by ESPN International. The agreement also allowed for joint digital media initiatives between the two companies. On 1 August 2022, after Warner Bros. Discovery acquired a 50% stake in BT Sport from BT Group, BT Sport ESPN was renamed BT Sport 4, and began to phase out its focus on U.S. sports, with ESPN programming ending altogether when TNT Sports replaced BT Sport in July 2023. In November 2023, ESPN announced an agreement with Sky Sports to sub-license college football and basketball coverage. with those rights then moving to streaming service DAZN in 2025. Games shown by other broadcasters, such as Fox and CBS, are not shown in the UK due to the deal with DAZN only covering games shown by ESPN, although Sky Sports continues to show Notre Dame home games live on Sky Sports NFL due to Notre Dame's home games being shown on NBC.
  • ESPN UK
  • ESPN America
  • ESPN Classic