BCCI awards telecast rights to Prasar Bharti

KOLKATA—India’s national broadcaster Prasar Bharati was Thursday awarded the cricket telecast rights of the forthcoming home series against Sri Lanka and South Africa.
After a meeting of its marketing committee here, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) granted the rights to Prasar Bharati, which would telecast the 12 One-Day International (ODI) matches on Doordarshan.
BCCI President Ranbir Singh Mahendra told reporters after the meeting that Doordarshan would telecast the seven-match ODI series against Sri Lanka starting Oct 25 in Nagpur, followed by five one-dayers against South Africa.
‘The committee felt that in order to reach out to the largest possible Indian audience, the national broadcaster would be the best option for the country’s terrestrial and cable rights, more so since under similar circumstance the same arrangement was made in 2004,’ Mahendra said.
Prasar Bharati would pay Rs.75 million ($1.6 million) to BCCI for every match.
The overseas rights of these ODIs would be decided soon with office bearers of the marketing committee entrusted with the job of selection, Mahendra said.
He said Trans World International (TWI) was selected as the production house because of its competitive bidding. ‘While TWI had quoted $1.54 million, the bid of Nimbus, another production house, was $1.95 million,’ he said.
Former BCCI president I.S. Bindra, who wanted Thursday’s meeting to be postponed till Delhi High Court issued an order on a case filed by Zee Telefilms and T.N. Sreenivasan, did not attend the deliberations.
Arun Jaitley, Kamal Morarka and Chirayu Amin were the other members of the committee who were not present in the meeting for various reasons.
Earlier, the marketing committee of the BCCI had been unable to finalise the broadcaster for the Sri Lanka series due to a spate of court cases over the last one year.
Zee Telefilms Ltd., one of the bidders for the four-year international cricket rights, has moved the Delhi High Court saying that the BCCI’s bid document was against Indian companies.
While the case is still being fought in court (it was transferred to a different bench), the BCCI made the interim arrangement for the next two series granting the rights to Prasar Bharati.
The four-year rights matter now awaits a court ruling.
Meanwhile, in an unprecedented move, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking for ‘preferential treatment’ in securing broadcast rights for telecasting international matches in India.
‘The ICC today (Thursday) confirmed that it had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ahead of the cabinet meeting concerning moves to give Indian terrestrial television preferential treatment in securing the broadcast rights to telecast international cricket in the country,’ the ICC said in a statement.—Agencies