Nova Sport (Bulgaria)

Nova Sport is Bulgarian sports television network owned by Nova Broadcasting Group. The channels broadcasts sports events (football, boxing, athletics, golf, basketball, volleyball and others) programmings.

History[]

MM was created by Krasen Karaychev and Toni Tanov in 1997 as the first Bulgarian television channel to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs with a television programming similar to MTV's. Several months after the launch of the television channel, the famous Bulgarian TV producer and comedian Kamen Vodenicharov became part of the television team. Under his management, MM expanded into a nationwide cable television channel. By the early 2000s, MM was broadcast by more than 160 cable and satellite operators in Bulgaria reaching a potential audience of 4.3 million people. In 2003, it started a sister channel - M2, which purpose was to play only music videos performed by Bulgarian bands and artists. In 2005 MM Television also founded its own record label - MM Records.

In 2005, Apace Media Group acquired 66% of the television channel for €660,000. The media company planned to upgrade the TV studios and to continue developing the music-orientated programming. Actually very little of this happened. MM once again changed its ownership in 2007 becoming part of the Balkan Media Group (a joint venture of Apace Media Group and Modern Times Group). 2007 saw major cuts in the television channel's finances as many of the TV shows were discontinued as well as its sister channel M2. In the beginning of 2009, MM dropped all its shows from its programming and started only to broadcast music videos. With its revenues continually falling after the restructuring of MM's programming, in 2010, after 13 years of existence, the channel owners decided to discontinue it as it operates in an over-saturated niche market with many other music channels available in the country, while the potential audience tends to change their way to consume music (according to the channel's executive director Jacob Anderson's statement in April 2010). After ceasing transmission on 30 April 2010, MM was replaced by the newly founded sports television channel Nova Sport.

The channel started in 2010 and replaced the music channel MM. It airs live sports events like football, boxing, athletics, golf, basketball, volleyball and others. The television was created with resemblance to the Scandinavian channel Viasat Sport, also owned by MTG, which shares the same graphic interface. From 30 July 2013 the channel began broadcasting in HD.