SportsMax Zone signs off after 23 years with final Kingston broadcast on 11 July 2025

SportsMax Zone went to air for the last time on Friday 11 July 2025, closing out the flagship afternoon sports talk block that has anchored the Jamaica-headquartered network’s schedule while the SportsMax service itself is still due to remain on air until 8 August.

Host Lance Whitaker opened alongside Mariah Ramarak, Donald Oliver and Ricardo Chambers, telling the audience the company was marking 23 years on the dial and using the slot chiefly to thank viewers across the Caribbean. On set, the four traded memories about growing up with the brand, the emotional weight of leaving on their own terms, and how the programme had doubled as a workplace family.

Later segments brought in marketing lead Tanya Lee Perkins, Trinidad-born production manager Kerry Gibbons, and Lenox Aldrin, who helped produce the Zone when it launched in July 2011. Perkins recalled early operations from a small New Kingston office, carriage at first only on Kingston cable systems, and later rollout across dozens of Caribbean territories and into Spanish-language markets such as the Dominican Republic. She credited much of the expansion vision to executive Oliver Mintosh, whom she described as a driving force behind brand tours, rights acquisitions and high-profile properties including English Premier League football, UEFA Champions League matches and Trinidad’s Secondary Schools Football League, which she said SportsMax helped put on television for the first time.

Gibbons spoke about relocating from Trinidad ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games, while Aldrin retraced the nerve-racking first live transmission, when senior executives crowded the studio until production staff cleared the room minutes before air.

International voices included sportscaster Alex Jordan, joining remotely from a cricket assignment in Guyana, and former Zone anchor Alexis Nunes, now with ESPN, who praised SportsMax for foregrounding Caribbean athletes and stories. Sportsmax.tv content editor Leighton Levy, who said he had spent nine and a half years with the digital side and frequent studio appearances, reflected alongside colleagues on how the website fed on-air segments.

Sister lifestyle and diaspora channel Scene TV was represented by senior producer Tena Thomas, marking a decade with that brand and describing email from viewers in Canada and the United States who relied on its Caribbean-focused newscast and magazine strands.

Toward the close, Whitaker read a written statement on behalf of Oliver McIntosh, long-serving former chair and chief executive, in which McIntosh saluted presenters past and present—including Mariah, Lance, Ricardo, Donald, George, Alexis, Simon, Alex and Joel—and framed the shutdown as part of natural industry evolution rather than defeat. In that message he also invoked the late chairman Pat Russo. McIntosh wrote, "The closure of Sports Max is an example of that change, not an example of failure," while insisting the network’s imprint on regional sport media would endure.

West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo contributed a brief recorded tribute, and veteran Eastern Caribbean broadcaster Joseph “Red” Pereira left a voice note asking for time on a future bulletin to outline wider worries about sports coverage after SportsMax. Production drivers, engineers, directors and junior producers likewise recorded goodbye messages, many crediting mentors Phil Riley and Michael Edwards by name. The programme ended with the four lead hosts thanking viewers and signing off for good.