The Hindu Business Line : Prasar Bharati rejects Ten Sports offer for triangular series

UNCERTAINTY about the broadcast of the forthcoming triangular cricket series in Sri Lanka on the terrestrial platform continues with Prasar Bharati not accepting Ten Sports's offer to provide live signals to 300 low power transmitters (LPTs) catering to the non-cable areas.

The national broadcaster has stated this in a letter to Mr Chris McDonald, CEO of Ten Sports.

Sources in Prasar Bharati said that according to the offer, Ten Sports would provide encrypted signals to DD and supply decoders to each of the LPT stations and Doordarshan would have to carry all the Ten Sports ads.

"In other words, DD would carry the Ten Sports channel on its network. If we do this, it would give Ten Sports tremendous commercial advantage since viewership would increase manifold. A public broadcaster cannot be seen to extend such undue benefit to a private channel," they added.

DD would also have to cancel its regular revenue generating programmes as it is not permitted to market the matches resulting in financial loss.

The national broadcaster has clarified that it would accept the highlights offer only if it can show the one-day international (ODI) matches live.

Prasar Bharati further said that it would not like to exclude the high power transmitters (HPTs) and LPTs situated in the cable areas from terrestrial transmission.

"Also, carrying the matches selectively on a few transmitters would mean that the other transmitters would not receive any signal and there would be a TV blackout," the sources said.

Responding to Ten Sports's claims that the sports broadcaster would incur losses if the triangular series were to be simulcast, Prasar Bharati has said that the satellite and terrestrial segments could be marketed together "which would give tremendous advantage to you and would more than offset the revenue expected from incremental declaration by cable operators."

Also, on the issue of the not participating in the tender process, officials said: "As public broadcasters we have never participated in any bidding of events happening outside India, for the simple reason that we are interested in only India-centric matches and not in a five-year or long-term arrangements with the attendant uncertainties since it would tantamount to gambling with taxpayers' money."

Prasar Bharati had proposed a 20:80 revenue share for the simulcast whereby Ten Sports would get a larger portion of the monies earned. DD would recover the opportunity cost of Rs 1 crore a match.

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