The Hindu Business Line : Now, AIR stutters on cricket broadcast

WITH just a few days to go for the India-Pakistan cricket series to begin, not just the telecast rights but negotiations for radio rights too have reached an impasse.

The Dubai-based ARY Digital, which holds the radio rights to these matches, and national broadcaster Prasar Bharati have not been able to reach a financial agreement.

According to senior Prasar Bharati officials, ARY had initially asked for $2,50,000 for live broadcast of three Tests and five One-Day Internationals (ODIs) on All India Radio (AIR). Subsequently, the international company decided to bring it down to $2,00,000.

"We had paid $40,000 last year for the radio rights to the same number of Test matches and ODIs. But this time, we have offered to pay $80,000. This is in line with the Commonwealth Games where we have offered to pay $4,00,000 for telecast rights of the forthcoming event in Melbourne, double of what was paid for the Games held in Manchester," said the official. He further added that the public broadcaster is unlikely to up its offer.

Telecast rights: Meanwhile, Prasar Bharati is awaiting a decision from the Bombay High Court regarding the television rights for the Indo-Pak series. Taj TV Ltd, which owns Ten Sports, had recently challenged the Government's recent guidelines on compulsory sharing of selected sporting events with Doordarshan.

Meanwhile, a PTI report said that Ten Sports has moved the Supreme Court seeking stay of the government guidelines making it mandatory for the sports channels to share feed of sporting events of national importance with Prasar Bharati.

The petition filed by Taj Television has termed the guideline as arbitrary without the authority of the law.

The sports channel has challenged the Bombay High Court order refusing it any relief by which it has been compelled to share the live feed of the series commencing from January 13.

Ten Sports has contended that since the acquisition costs of such events run into millions of dollars, sharing of television rights with Doordarshan would result in loss of both advertising and subscription revenue.

However, this has not prevented the public broadcaster from tapping the market for advertisers.

While Ten Sports has managed to sell about 90 per cent of its inventory, Prasar Bharati officials said that they have managed to access the advertising revenue potential from the series.

Revenue sharing: If the telecast rights were eventually shared with the national broadcaster, a revenue sharing formula of 75:25 in favour of rights holder without any minimum guarantee/opportunity cost would be applied.

According to the new arrangement spelt out by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, both the private and the public broadcaster will have to give an estimate of the advertising revenues that could be garnered from the matches.

The broadcaster that can get higher revenues would be asked to market the series.

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