Indiantelevision.com Team

(3 November 2007 8:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: Doordarshan, which already had the telecast rights for terrestrial telecast of all cricket matches played in India under the Sports Broadcasting signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act 2007, has acquired the rights to market the commercial airtime for the current India-Pakistan series.

After protracted three-day bidding process which ended in the early hours of this morning, Prasar Bharati outbid the rights holder Nimbus with its bid of Rs 812.5 million. Nimbus is understood to have bid an amount of Rs 750 million.

Until now, Nimbus had been marketing the telecast on both its Neo Sports as well as the Doordarshan Sports channels.

While the Act provides that the rights holders for telecast of sporting events of national importance are required to share the broadcast signals with the public broadcaster, the decision about marketing the commercial time is taken on the basis of a bidding process.

In an official response, Nimbus said DD made an extremely lucrative offer of Rs 970 million gross, which is Rs 812.5 million net, to market the ad time on DD alone.

"We liked the offer, so we accepted it. This is good for Nimbus as it allows both our licensees ( Neo Sports Broadcast to focus on Cable & Satellite segment and DD to focus on terrestrial segment) to maximize their respective revenues," a Nimbus spokesperson said.

Prasar Bharati also acquired the exclusive rights for live radio commentary of the series for which it will pay $10,000 to Nimbus for each of the five One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and three Test matches.

Nimbus had bought the media rights from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for telecast of cricket matches for a sum of $612 million for four years.

Meanwhile with the government failing to take a decision on the demand of private broadcasters to encrypt the live feed, the current Indo-Pak series remains free-to-air as far as Doordarshan is concerned.

It is understood that Nimbus has served a legal notice to the government in this regard.

Private broadcasters say unencrypted feed leads to huge revenue losses as a result of piracy, particularly in neighbouring countries.

Earlier, a technical committee headed by former All India Radio Director-General Brajeshwar Singh had examined the issue. The BCCI had at one stage offered to fund the amount of $ 20 million that is the estimated expense on encryption.