Sharing feed to become a law?

Cricket fans in future may not miss any cricket match involving India as the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has decided to bring it under the purview of the Broadcasting law.

Cricket fans in future may not miss any cricket match involving India as the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has decided to bring it under the purview of the Broadcasting law. The sharing of cricket feed with Prasar Bharati will become a law and its violation will result in cancellation of the down-linking or up- linking permission.

HT Image

This is being done to prevent sports channels like Ten Sports and ESPN from going to court against the Government guidelines on mandatory sharing of feed with Prasar Bharati. Ten Sports had moved the Supreme Court against the guidelines, terming them to be in violation of fundamental rights and forcing Prasar Bharati to allow exclusive broadcast of the three Test matches in the away IndoPak series .

In a decision taken to prevent this in future, a senior ministry official told HT that the guidelines would be revised before it becomes a law. "There can be some changes in the revenue model before the guidelines are notified under the new law," the official commented.

Under the present down linking guidelines, the revenue sharing model between Prasar Bharati and the company holding the rights for the sporting event is 25: 75 percent in favour of the former. Most sports broadcasting companies have stated that Prasar Bharati should not get more than 5 to 10 per cent of the total revenue generated.