The Indian government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has decided to solve some of the concerns related to the broadcasting of the sporting events of national importance. Last week, the ministry proposed an amendment to a sports broadcasting act which will tend to make India’s private broadcasters a bit unhappy.
If the amendment is accepted, Indian television viewers could soon watch sporting events of national importance, as specified by the Indian government, on public broadcaster Prasar Bharati’s Doordarshan television network across all terrestrial and direct-to-home platforms.
The Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing With Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007, states that no private rights holder can telecast a “sporting event of national importance” live in India unless it simultaneously shares the signal (without any advertisements) with Prasar Bharati, so that the public broadcaster can re-transmit the same on its own terrestrial network and direct-to-home platform DD FreeDish.
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Under this Act, Prasar Bharati don’t require to show the logo of the rights holder’s channel and can generate its own pre and post-match programmes. The Act also forces the rights holder to share 25% of its television advertisement revenue with Prasar Bharati (50% in case of radio).
The ministry claimed, in its proposal, that viewers “who do not have DD FreeDish or Doordarshan’s terrestrial network are either unable to watch these sporting events of national importance or are compelled to watch these sporting events on highly priced sports channels and, thus, the very objective with which the Parliament had enacted the Sports Act, has been defeated”.
India’s private sports broadcasters such as the Star Sports network and Sony Pictures Sports Network will definitely be pleased with this proposal, considering the amount of money they spend on media rights of sporting events, especially in cricket.
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Star India last year acquired the media rights for the popular Indian Premier League in a five-year deal worth a record ₹16,347 crore. Star India also purchased the media rights for the Indian cricket team’s home matches till 2023 for a record ₹6138.1 crore earlier this year.
