Prasar Bharati eyes sport telecasts

Television broadcasters holdings rights to overseas sports events involving India may soon be facing the same predicament that the rights holders to the fixtures in India seem destined to face, which is, having to share the feed with public broadcaster Prasar Bharati.

This clause is proposed to be included in the upcoming downlinking policy. If it finds its way into the final policy, then, for example, if the Indian cricket team is playing in Australia and ESPN Star Sports has the right to beam the broadcast to India, it will have to share the content with Prasar Bharati. The same will be applicable for other sports and events such as Olympics.

This condition is a part of the proposed downlinking policy, which has been recommended to a group of ministers (GoM), by the Cabinet last week. The GoM is headed by Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee and has Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy, Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Law Minister HR Bharadwaj.

"For the purpose of this policy, the government will list out the events in consultation with the broadcasting industry. Similar policy exists in other countries too. The sharing of content will be based on certain commercial consideration," said an information and broadcasting ministry official.

The GoM is expected to draw up the commercial conditions pertaining to Prasar Bharati getting the broadcast rights.

The concept of sharing the content has not been accepted well by the broadcasting industry, which thinks that a move like this will bring down the overall value of sports broadcasting business.

Broadcasters are not in favor of such a move, while the government thinks that this move will benefit the broadcasting sector as it will expand the base number of viewers. Hence, the overall valuation of events will go up.

Private broadcasters on their part is of the view that such a move would not only devalue the rights but could also become a tool for potential misuse.

"The value of the rights gets diluted quite dramatically when the feed has to be mandatory shared with Prasar Bharati," RC Venkateish, managing director, ESPN-Star Sports, today said at a seminar on sports broadcasting and content sharing organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) .

"We buy the rights after going through a stiff and competitive process. In case the exclusivity is gone, we lose our pay subscribers whose subscription in normal circumstances is almost half of the money we make," Venkateish said.

Private broadcaster think that not just advertising revenue, but the subscription revenue will also be impacted severely as a result of this move. They also fear that this move would lead to a series of legal wrangles, leading to a cut in the valuation of sports broadcasting business.

Doordarshan's director-general Navin Kumar said that the move by the government would lead to a large number of viewers getting access to the broadcasting content.