TOKYO, JAPAN – The largest global sports media property in Asian history, ONE Championship (ONE), has just announced that it has partnered with Japanese internet TV station AbemaTV. With the partnership, ONE Championship live events and digital content will be broadcast to AbemaTV subscribers.
The partnership will cover more than 20 live ONE Championship events in 2018, as well as offer a reality TV series called “Surrogacy Battles”, which aims to discover fresh young Japanese martial arts talent. The program will run 12 1-hour episodes featuring young martial arts prospects no older than 22 years of age. The winner of the show will receive JPY 3 million and a ONE Championship multi-bout contract amounting to over USD $100,000.
ONE Championship, the world’s largest martial arts organization, hosts bouts across all styles of martial arts such as Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Karate, Kung Fu, Silat, Sanda, Lethwei, Mixed Martial Arts, Tae Kwon Do, Submission Grappling, and more. It is home to some of the biggest names in martial arts, including Japanese superstars Shinya “Tobikan Judan” Aoki, Yoshitaka “Nobita” Naito, Mei “V.V” Yamaguchi, and Koji “The Commander” Ando, among others.
Established by Cyber Agent in conjunction with TV Asahi, AbemaTV was created to provide millions of Japanese consumers with a content streaming service that offers scheduled and live programming for a wide range of smart devices which include Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, as well as PC and Mac machines. Content streams in Hi-Definition and links with Twitter to provide viewers an interactive platform. As of 2018, AbemaTV has become the largest internet television provider in Asia with over 28 million app downloads.
AbemaTV offers a linear programming schedule, as well as Video-on-Demand (VoD) featuring a large variety of shows including news, drama, anime, family-friendly programs, music, radio, live sports, and martial arts.