Prime Ticket to Launch Spanish-Language Sports Network

The Prime Ticket regional cable sports network said Tuesday it will launch a similar sports venture for Spanish-speaking viewers in late October.

Soccer will be a programming staple of La Cadena Deportiva, which has already acquired rights to 300 games, mainly from South and Central America, and plans to show about 150 of them.

Other programming includes boxing matches, and games of teams currently carried by Prime Ticket, such as the Los Angeles Kings and Lakers, California Angels and USC, UCLA and Pepperdine collegiate events. A sports news program, akin to Prime Ticket’s “Press Box,” is also planned.

However, the Los Angeles Dodgers, arguably the area’s most popular team among the Latino community, will not be carried on La Cadena Deportiva because of their current disinterest in a basic cable contract, according to Roger L. Werner Jr., Prime Ticket’s president and chief executive officer.

The new service, which is translated as “The network of and about sports,” will broadcast 18 hours a day, seven days a week to Southern California and portions of Arizona and Nevada.

The network is being formed in part to increase cable subscription among the Latino population, which Richard Ramirez, La Cadena Deportiva’s vice president and general manager, called “the largest non-subscribing market.”

Werner said that only 15-18% of Latino households in the network’s area currently subscribe to cable television, far trailing the 60% national figure.

Werner is confident the service will prove attractive to advertisers seeking to reach male Latino heads of households through its male-oriented programming. Other incentives to advertisers are that it will give them a fourth source to place Spanish-language advertisements besides KMEX-TV Channel 34, KVEA-TV Channel 52 and KWHY-TV Channel 22, and firms that currently find advertising on the existing Spanish-language stations too expensive can advertise on individual cable systems during La Cadena Deportiva’s programming.

Craig Watson, Los Angeles-area general manager of Crown Cable, attended the news conference and said afterward that La Cadena Deportiva “clearly meets an unmet need,” but could face problems in getting onto cable systems.

“The timing is a little tough, because we’re facing new federal regulations that are forcing many systems to add broadcast (stations) that we haven’t had to carry,” said Watson, whose firm serves around 105,000 households, mainly in the San Gabriel Valley. “But it’s fair to say that every major cable operator is making (technical) upgrades that are going to give us some room to move when we look at new services.”

Most systems are at their maximum channel capacity. Relatively new national networks such as USA Networks’ Sci-Fi Channel and Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network are having difficulty at getting onto systems.

“I don’t see anyone running out and buying cable just to get (the Cartoon Network),” Werner said. “This is going to serve a market that has been so underserved and has such a tremendous potential.”