News Corporation took the full control of the venture in 2012, and relaunched the channels in two phases in January 2013 and August 2014, respectively.
ESPN was originally a part of the so-called "Gang of Five", which was a consortium that was set up to compete against STAR TV in the region.
[7] On 16 January 1998, a version of Fox Sports was launched in the Middle East, as carried by Star Select.
[8] This apparently replaced ESPN STAR Sports in the region, but the pan-Asian version was available via the AsiaSat and Palapa satellites.
[20] On March 8, 2021, Fox Sports partnered with Emtek's OTT media service Vidio to make the networks available for Indonesian viewers.
[23] On April 27, 2021, Disney announced that the Fox Sports network, along with the rest of Fox channels, would close down for good on October 1 after 30 years of broadcasting, folding the former Prime Sports/Star Sports Asia and ESPN Asia channel spaces, as they shift their focus to the latter streaming platform Disney+ (or Disney+ Hotstar for Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand; although the launch in Vietnam was currently unknown).
[2] The last event covered by the channel was the Formula One 2021 Russian Grand Prix, 2021 Superbike World Championship at Circuito de Jerez and UFC 266: Volkanovski vs. Ortega.
Prior to the shutdown, Korean sports network SPOTV brought the licensee to cover up the remaining 2021 MotoGP World Championship,[24] taking over the Fox Sports network once their transmission goes offline, resuming the remaining MotoGP races.
[33] Mola streamed the remaining UFC fights in Indonesia while also carrying the sub-license to both Singapore & Malaysia for future Live fights with the inclusion of Dana White's Contender Series that hadn't been aired when Fox Sports mainly aired the UFC main events,[34] meanwhile the Emtek group aired the remaining Formula One races for their Champions TV network along with their OTT media service Vidio which previously carried the Fox Sports network to the service.
[35][36] As reported exclusively from SportBusiness, the Formula One coverage in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia (excluding Vietnam, in which K+ owned the rights following the closure of the channel) has been transferred over to beIN Sports starting from 2023,[37] which also carried both Australian Open and French Open tennis rights (except in Vietnam, which was owned by K+ and VTVcab respectively),[38][39] awhile SPOTV, which already available across Southeast Asia (excluding Vietnam until December 24, 2023[27]), will broadcast Wimbledon and the US Open.