Not cricket

The decision to force private television channels to share their content with government-owned Doordarshan is both bad economics and bad in principle. First, it will knock the bottom out of the revenue model of most sports broadcasters such as ESPN and Ten Sports.

These channels make their money mainly through subscriptions and people subscribe to them as otherwise they will not be able to view their favourite matches.

But once it is known that even if, say, ESPN wins the telecast rights for a particular series, it will have to share the feed with Doordarshan, the urge to subscribe to ESPN will fall sharply. This is because Doordarshan will be there with the feed for free viewing.

Apologists for the government argue that this does not really matter as much as it is being made out. Once the feed is shared with Doordarshan, the viewership will increase dramatically, as will the advertisement revenue. The resultant revenue share of ESPN, to continue with the same example, will far exceed the revenue lost through vanished subscription.

But this is misleading since, as private telecasters have argued in a report in this newspaper, the additional revenue that will accrue to them in a sharing situation will be 10-15 per cent of the total revenue, which will be much smaller than the loss in subscription.

But there is an additional issue which goes beyond whether the channels are being adequately compensated for their potential loss of business. It is whether they can run their business in the manner they like or whether the government will decide not just how they will run their business but also the price they will get paid for toeing the official line.

It is difficult to buy the argument being extended that sports events like cricket have such national importance that someone's contractual rights (to make money out of broadcast rights that have been bid for) can be trampled upon.

A key sporting event is not like the President's broadcast or the Republic Day parade, even if, by some miracle, the Indian cricket team finally starts performing well consistently. At most, it is the government's duty to ensure that a popular sporting event is easily accessible at a reasonable price, and there is no monopolistic situation in which access is limited to maximise revenue.

Before the arrival of TV and one-day cricket matches, it was a matter of some social distinction to get a ticket for a test match. There is no evidence that Indian democracy suffered thereby.

Surely, if this is the case, why not just scrap the bidding for events that are considered to be of national importance, give the telecast rights to Doordarshan, and maybe get others to bid for just the satellite rights? Indeed, why even have gate money for such events since it is everyone's right to see events of such national importance free?