Private sports broadcaster Zee Sports says it is ready to share its feed with public broadcaster Prasar Bharati if it is awarded the Board of Control for Cricket in India's telecast rights, a position contrary to that of other players like ESPN-Star Sports and Ten Sports, both of whom have gone to court on the issue.
"We are ready to share (the feed) with Prasar Bharati if we emerge successful in the bidding process," Zee Sports Business Head Himanshu Modi said.
Modi said that by making it mandatory to share the feed on Doordarshan's terrestrial network, the government is "only legislating something which has been in practice".
"So why the hue and cry now?," he said, pointing out to instances when many sports broadcasters had shared their feed with Doordarshan for telecast on the terrestrial network.
Interestingly, both ESPN-Star and Ten Sports have gone to court and protested against the government legislation that mandates them to share "exclusive" cricket feed with Prasar Bharati.
While ESPN-Star knocked the doors of the Delhi high court on the matter, Ten Sports approached the Bombay high court.
As part of the revisions on up-linking and down-linking guidelines, the government has made it mandatory for private sports broadcasters/management companies to share with DD the feed of the Indian cricket team's matches.
This has been done in national interest, going by the public hysteria the sport creates in the country.
Asked whether the 'must provide' clause will devalue the cricket rights, as claimed by foreign sports broadcasters, Modi said it is not the case.
"No, I don't feel that this will happen," he said.
He said that even in the last round of bidding for the cricket rights, which was cancelled by the new management of the BCCI, most of the players had pre-bid arrangements with Prasar Bharati.
The BCCI, which has not been able to sell cricket rights in two of its previous tenders, is expected to come out with a new tender for long-term cricket shortly.
Asked whether he expects the bid amounts to be higher this time round, Modi refused any direct reply.
"See, it depends on a lot of factors like what are the teams that would be coming to India for playing, how many matches will be played and other things.
"Only when these things are clear one can make any comment on this," he said.
On the financial position of Zee Sports, he said it would break-even in the next 18-24 months. "We expect that by this time we will break-even," Modi said, though refusing to divulge any figures.
