Azteca Deportes (currently known as TV Azteca Deportes) is the sports division of Mexico's TV Azteca television network. It produces sports events and regular sports programming aired on the Azteca Uno and Azteca 7 networks in Mexico and now on Estrella TV in the United States.
Azteca's predecessor, Imevisión, had carried some sports programming, notably including the 1988 and 1992 Summer Olympics and the 1992 Winter Olympics, as well as the 1986 and 1990 FIFA World Cups. Azteca increased its sports programming upon privatization in 1993.
TV Azteca owns Mazatlán F.C., and carries the home matches of this teams as well as Club Puebla, Atlas F.C., FC Juárez, Club Necaxa, Querétaro F.C. and C.D. Guadalajara. In some cases, the rights are shared with ESPN and Televisa. [1]
TV Azteca also holds part or all of the Mexican rights to the FIFA Confederations Cup, Copa América, CONCACAF Gold Cup, and the FIFA World Cup.
In addition, Azteca and competitor Televisa share the rights to the games of the Mexico national football team through 2018. [2]
Azteca 7 has carried NFL games for years. During the regular season, it airs a whip-around program similar to NFL RedZone called Ritual NFL, which covers the early afternoon games. It also airs the Super Bowl and AFC playoff games.
Box Azteca, featuring major fights, airs regularly on Azteca 7. Lucha Azteca debuted in 2016, featuring the Liga Élite promotion and revived in 2019 with a new deal with Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide. [3]
The primary studio show produced by Azteca Deportes is the weekly show DeporTV, which airs on Sundays and predates TV Azteca itself by nearly 20 years. Other studio shows, such as Los Protagonistas, have also aired over the years on Azteca 13 and Azteca 7.
Sports that Azteca has carried in the past but to which it does not currently hold the rights include NBA basketball, NHL hockey and the Olympic Games (whose rights in 2016 were held by América Móvil and subleased to public broadcasters). [4]
Club de Fútbol América S.A. de C.V., commonly known as Club América or simply América, is a professional football club based in Mexico City. Nicknamed Las Águilas, it competes in Liga MX, the top tier of Mexican football. The club was founded in 1916, and since 1959 has been owned by mass media company Televisa. The team plays its home games at the Estadio Azteca, the largest stadium in Latin America and one of the largest in the world.
Estadio Azteca is a football stadium located in Mexico City. It is the official home of football team Club América, as well as the Mexico national team. The stadium sits at an altitude of 2,200 m above sea level. With a capacity of 87,523, it is the largest stadium in Latin America and the eighth-largest association football stadium in the world.
XHTV-TDT, launched in 1950 by Romulo O'Farril, is a flagship TV station of Televisa and carries its FORO news network. FOROtv is available on various cable television companies and SKY México satellite service, along with several providers in the United States as part of Televisa and Univision's partnership. It is the oldest TV station in Mexico and Latin America.
XHGC-TDT is a television station owned by Grupo Televisa, broadcasting from Mexico City, and is the flagship of the Canal 5 network.
Telemundo Deportes is the programming division of NBC Sports Group, owned by NBCUniversal, that is responsible for the production of sports events and magazine programs that air on NBCUniversal's Spanish language television networks Telemundo and Universo and the streaming service Peacock. Originating as the former's sports division Deportes Telemundo from 1999 to 2015, it broadcasts an array of sports events, including the soccer matches from various international soccer leagues and the Olympic Games, among others.
Azteca América was an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by INNOVATE Corp., which acquired the network from the Azteca International Corporation subsidiary of TV Azteca.
ESPN Deportes is an American multinational Spanish-language pay television sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications. The network is aimed primarily at the Hispanic community in the United States. The channel broadcasts from studio facilities at ESPN's traditional bases of operations in Los Angeles, and Bristol, Connecticut, along with their Mexican base in Mexico City.
Fox Deportes is an American pay television network dedicated to broadcasting sports-related programming in Spanish, aimed at the Hispanic population in the United States. Launched in 1993, Fox Deportes, a division of Fox Sports, is the first and longest-running Spanish-language sports network in the country.
Azteca 7 is a Mexican network owned by TV Azteca, with more than 100 main transmitters all over Mexico.
The Liga MX, officially known as the Liga BBVA MX for sponsorship reasons, is the top professional football division in Mexico. Formerly known as the Primera División de México, it is contested by 18 clubs and is divided into two tournaments – "Apertura" and "Clausura"– which typically run from July to December and January to May. The champion of each tournament is decided via a playoff ("Liguilla") system. Since 2020, promotion and relegation has been suspended, which is to last until 2026.
In the United States, sports are televised on various broadcast networks, national and specialty sports cable channels, and regional sports networks. U.S. sports rights are estimated to be worth a total of $22.42 billion in 2019, about 44 percent of the total worldwide sports media market. U.S. networks are willing to pay a significant amount of money for television sports contracts because it attracts large amounts of viewership; live sport broadcasts accounted for 44 of the 50 list of most watched television broadcasts in the United States in 2016.
Azteca Uno, is a Mexican national broadcast television network owned by TV Azteca, with more than 100 transmitters across the country. Azteca Uno broadcasts on virtual channel 1. Azteca Uno programming is available in Mexico on satellite via Sky and Dish Network, as well as all Mexican cable systems, and some Azteca Uno programming were seen in the United States on Azteca América.
Las Estrellas is one of the cornerstone networks of TelevisaUnivision, with affiliate stations all over Mexico, flagshipped at XEW-TDT in Mexico City. Many of the programs of Las Estrellas are seen in the United States on Univision, UniMás, and Galavisión.
Canal 5 is a Mexican free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It traces its origins to the foundation of Channel 5 in Mexico City in 1952. Canal 5's program lineup is generally targeted at a younger audience and includes cartoons, foreign series and movies, along with a limited number of sporting events such as NFL games, boxing, the FIFA World Cup and, historically, the Olympic Games.
TUDN is an American Spanish language sports channel. Owned by TelevisaUnivision, it is an extension of the company's sports division of the same name, with TUDN the acronym of TelevisaUnivision Deportes Network. It launched on April 7, 2012, along with Univision Tlnovelas and FOROtv.
TUDN is a sports programming division of Univision, a Spanish language broadcast television network owned by TelevisaUnivision, that is responsible for the production of televised coverage of sports events and magazine programs that air on the parent Univision network and sister network UniMás, and cable channels Galavisión and TUDN TV channel. The division's premier sports properties are its broadcast rights to Liga MX, select matches involving the Mexico and United States men's national soccer teams, tournament matches from the CONCACAF Gold Cup and Copa América. The division's headquarters are at TelevisaUnivision's South Florida headquarters in the Miami suburb of Doral, Florida.
TVC Deportes is a Mexican sports channel, founded August 11, 2007. Currently only can be viewed through cable television systems in Mexico. Its programming combines both national and international sports, a sports news program, and several analysis programs dedicated to other sports.
Barak Fever Daniels is a Mexican-Israeli sport journalist who works for the multinational sport chain ESPN. He began his professional career in TV Azteca in 1998 in their statistics department and has covered a wide variety of major sporting events such as Euro 2004 in Portugal, Euro 2008 in Austria-Switzerland, Olympics 2008 in Beijing, FIFA World Cup in Germany 2006 and America's Cup 2007 in Venezuela. Fever studied Communications at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
Fútbol Club Juárez, commonly referred to as Bravos de Juárez, or simply as Juárez, is a Mexican football club based in the city of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua that currently competes in Liga MX.
José Ramón Fernández Álvarez is a Mexican journalist, sportscaster, sports commentator, and television host currently working for ESPN Deportes and ESPN Mexico. Fernández started his journalistic career in 1970 and since has covered numerous major sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics.