The Hindu Business Line : Zee bags cricket telecast deal

ZEE Telefilms on Sunday beat the ESPN-Star Sports combine to win a $308-million cricket telecast deal. The deal is for four years starting next month, and covers both international and domestic cricket played in India.

The President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Mr Jagmohan Dalmiya, announced that Zee had been awarded the contract subject to certain conditions.

The key condition is that it has to deposit $20 million with BCCI within the next three days. The Zee Telefilms Chairman, Mr Subhash Chandra, said the condition would be met.

The two bidders, ESPN-Star Sports and Zee, both offered BCCI $308 million in the last round of negotiations on Sunday. Mr Dalmiya said Zee had been awarded the deal because it had bid higher at an earlier stage.

Zee's earlier bid was $260 million, while ESPN-Star Sports offered $230 million. Mr Chandra said the company had increased its offer in Sunday's negotiations because BCCI had raised the number of days of international cricket over the next four years.

BCCI made a firm commitment of 144 days of international cricket over the next four years, against the earlier offer of 108 days. BCCI has also indicated that the number of days of international cricket could finally be increased to 160.

Mr Chandra told the media after the result that his team had met with BCCI officials three times during the day to discuss the payment schedule. The total payment schedule is linked to the number of days of international cricket in a year.

Zee's main revenue streams from the deal would be advertising, domestic subscription and syndication of rights to other channels. Zee is to soon start talks with Doordarshan for terrestrial distribution.

Mr Chandra said that having acquired cricket telecast rights, Zee had added sports programming to its portfolio. "With this, we will be a complete media network," he said.

Zee is to outsource production in the beginning. In the run up to the final round of negotiations, Mr Chandra had said that except for Ten Sports, no other sports channel had its own production facility.