Feast of hockey for Ukraine!

An agreement has been sealed which will bring coverage of Kontinental Hockey League games to viewers across Ukraine. Three TV channels have signed contracts to broadcast games in the forthcoming 2012-13 season, in which Ukrainian hockey club Donbass of Donetsk makes its debut in the KHL Championship.

The Hockey channel, which has been broadcasting since January 2012 and is the first Ukrainian TV channel purely devoted to the sport, will show every HC Donbass game, at home and on the road, in the regular season and the play-offs, plus the All-Star Game and a number of games featuring other clubs in the League. In all, the Hockey channel is to show up to 200 games from the KHL Championship. Half of Donbass’s home games will be shown in HD.

The Donbass channel, whose TV broadcasts cover the eastern part of the country, also plans to show every HC Donbass game, home and away. Some of them will also be shown on Ukraine’s nationwide TV channel, ICTV (International Commercial Television).

“The agreement we have signed with our Ukrainian partners is a highly significant event,” said Natalya Chaykovskaya, head of the Television Projects Department of KHL-Marketing. “In a country where football has been the dominant sport, both on TV and among the people, it will be the first time that Ukrainians have been treated to such extensive coverage of hockey. I hope that screening so many games from the strongest hockey league in Europe will help increase the popularity of our sport across Ukraine.”