Sharing cricket feed may soon become mandatory

NEW DELHI: The government plans to bring an ordinance early next month to make it mandatory for private broadcasters to share feeds of national events, particularly cricket matches, with the state-run Prasar Bharati.

The ordinance, to be promulgated in the first week of February, will also bring under its purview Nimbus Communications, which holds exclusive rights to broadcast all international matches to be held in India until 2010.

The new piece of legislation will make it obligatory for Nimbus to share live feeds of all cricket matches to be played in the country with Prasar Bharati, besides sharing advertisement revenue from joint feeds.

While Nimbus, which telecasts the matches on its Neo Sports channel, will pocket 75% of the revenue, Prasar Bharati gets to keep 25%. The ordinance, however, requires the private broadcaster to equally share the advertisement proceeds for radio broadcasts with state broadcaster All India Radio.

The ordinance comes close on the heels of a major tussle between Nimbus and the state broadcaster over the telecast of the ongoing one-day series between India and the West Indies. Nimbus has bought rights to telecast all international cricket matches to be held in India from March 2006 until 2010 for $612 million.

It���s Neo Sports channel, however, is available in no more than a million homes. When the dispute reached the Delhi High Court, the court ordered Nimbus to share a clean or advert-free feed with the state broadcaster, with a delay of 7 minutes.

A day later, however, Nimbus agreed to a joint feed that would fetch it a revenue of nearly Rs 22 crore, with over Rs 5 crore going to Doordarshan. The government, which backed Prasar Bharati saying that cricket was a national event and must be watched in all Indian homes, had mulled the ordinance route at a Cabinet meet recently to settle the dispute over cricket telecasts once and for all.

However, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, who is also the president of the BCCI, opposed the move, saying that discussions must be held with all the stakeholders. The ordinance move now comes after discussions with the stakeholders were held over the last few days.