Zee Sports to telecast DLF Cup

Zee Sports alone will telecast the cricket tri-series DLF Cup among India, Australia and the West Indies.

This move comes in the wake of Ten Sports getting a reprieve from the Supreme Court in not having to share its feed with public broadcaster Prasar Bharti.

The series includes seven one-day internationals starting from September 12 in Kuala Lumpur. Earlier this year, Zee Sports had entered into an agreement with Doordarshan to jointly telecast the two Indo-Pak one-dayers in Abu Dhabi this month -- a move it had predicted would turn into a moneyspinner.

The idea was that with both the broadcasters jointly marketing the DLF Cup between India and Pakistan, the ad inventory would double, yielding more advertisement revenue.

Commenting on the company's business strategy, Zee Sports Business Head Himanshu Mody said, "That agreement was specific only to that event. Moreover, with the Supreme Court's verdict, the downlinking guidelines which made it mandatory to share the feed no longer bind us. We did negotiate with Doordarshan but couldn't reach mutually agreeable commercial terms."

According to Modi, "This will boost our subscription revenue and we won't really lose out on the ad revenue as the ad rates would be higher, even if technically the inventory is less."

Live commentary of these matches will be aired by All India Radio. For the current tournament, the ad rates are pegged at Rs 2,50,000 for every 10 second slot and roughly 75 per cent of the inventory has been sold.

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