Mumbai: Sony Sports Network will broadcast the year’s first Grand Slam Event the Australian Open 2022 starting 17 January on Sony Six, Sony Ten 2, Sony Ten 3 and Sony Ten 4 as well as on OTT platform - Sonyliv.

Sony Sports has onboarded advertisers like Lenovo, Amul, Kia Motors, and LIC as sponsors. Other advertisers like Skoda, Total Oil, Ford, Go Mechanic, Mercedes, Dafa News, Fairplay News, 1X News, Netmed and Apple will also be a part of the telecast.

Sony Sports’ Live studio show ‘Extraa Serve’ will be hosted by Arpit Sharma and Sarthak Lal and will provide in-depth insight into the action at Melbourne Park. Former tennis players like Somdev Devvarman, Purav Raja and Gaurav Natekar are set to feature as expert panelists on the show along with on-ground reporter Adriano Del Monte. The Hindi commentary on Sony Ten 3 channel will be provided by Manish Batavia, Atish Thukral, and Gaurav Natekar.

This year, the world's top player Ash Barty will attempt to become the first local player to win an Australian Open singles title in 44 years while defending champion Naomi Osaka is expected to return and target a fifth career major singles title.

Rafael Nadal, tied with Djokovic at 20 career major singles titles, will also be competing for the first time since August and will hope to end Djokovic’s streak at the Australian Open 2022.

The Grand Slam tournament will see participation from top Indian players like Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza. The mixed doubles pair will be playing this year’s tournament.

This edition of the Grand Slam will also witness the 100th anniversary of the women’s competition at the Australian Open. To honor this feat, there will be a historic change in the schedule of the tournament. Both women’s semi-final matches will be moving to the night session.

“Australian Open is the first and most competitive tennis Grand Slam of the calendar year as it sees participation from the best tennis players from across the globe,” said Sony Pictures Networks India chief revenue officer of distribution and head – sports business Rajesh Kaul. “There is already a lot of talk about the tournament amongst the advertisers as we have received tremendous response from various sectors like tech, automobile, FMCG and more. We aim to showcase and bring real-time action from the courts and this year with our Hindi and English feeds along with our studio show, ‘Extraa Serve’ that will also take the tournament to a wider audience in India.”