History
In November 1997, Al Gosling who originally founded and was running the worlds leading Extreme Sports TV distribution company Extreme International, had the realisation that like with popular music before MTV launched in 1981 a massive part of youth culture had been ignored by mainstream media. Al believed there was an opportunity to create the worlds first TV channel showing all extreme sports and the culture and set out to do so.
UPCtv, the programming arm of the Dutch-based cable television operator, UPC, was looking for new channels to offer its subscribers and in April 1998 Ben Barrett the head of Sales at Extreme was approached by Stephen Cohen, UPCtv's Chief Operating Officer, at the MIP programming market in Cannes, France, with a proposal for a joint venture between the two companies. Extreme would provide the vision, the brand, the consumer insights and programming content for the channel and and Cohen and UPC would offer, distribution and the technical and creative support to the station, along with seven other new channels he was creating.
Al drove the negotiations and launch with help from Managing directors and Legal Director Adam Oliver, sales Director Juanjo Marquez Head of Sales Ben Barrett, and programming Manager Andy Warkman. The channel launched in May 1999 from Holland.
It was immensely popular and there was massive demand from day one and over the next eight years the channel launched into over 60 countries in Europe, the UAE and Russia. In October 2006 The Extreme Sports Company Extreme Sports Company acquired full ownership of the Extreme brand and sold its stake in the operating channel business for an undisclosed multi million $ sum to John Malone's Liberty Global Inc. which had by then became owners of UPC. Following this acquisition Al Gosling developed Extreme into a pioneering brand management and licensing company focused on delivering differenciated products and services to the underserved Extreme sports community.
An investment in 2011 by Kleinwort Benson enabled them to build the core pillars of the business: infastructure, brand marketing and a new managemnt team who come from brands such as Walt Disney, MTV, ITV, Block Buster, Nike, Pepsi, Hilton, Pentland, UBS & Warner Bros.
By taking a strategic, long term approach to the way of operating in the licensing industry they are and have developed a portfolio of exclusive long term partnerships with market leading companies across a number of categories in the consumer products and service sectors including Extreme Hotels, Destinations, Experiences, Mobile, Drinks, Apparel, Footwear, Electronics, Video Gaming and Cars.
In 1999, The Extreme Sports Company launched its United States operations, and charged veteran producer, Lloyd Bryan Adams with the task of heading up the North American presence. They launched EX TV, a branded block on Fox Sports Net in March 2002 but the channel never launched there. (http://businss.transwrld.net/2780/uncategorized/extreme-group-launches-action-sports-programming-on-fox-sports-net/)
Read more about this topic: Extreme Sports Channel
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