BCCI to move court for fresh telecasting tender

New Delhi: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today announced its decision to approach the courts seeking approval to cancel the existing tender processes for telecast rights. Based on the court's approval, BCCI will put out a fresh tender with new terms and agreements.

It also outlined today its plans on sponsorship generation. The BCCI plans to award sponsorships to fresh contenders for team sponsorship. Lalit Modi, vice president, BCCI, and member-marketing committee, BCCI, said that several corporate entities had evinced interest in team sponsorship, including the current partner, Sahara, and said that the opportunity would be awarded to the highest bidder.

In addition, BCCI will also invite bids in the category of official team kit supplier and apparel licensee. "The tender for this is likely to be floated in the coming week," Modi added.

BCCI also outlined several additional revenue opportunities through new streams. This included 'official supplier' rights in several categories and licensing of branded merchandising. Official supplier rights will also be awarded for nine categories like airline, hotel, travel partner, anmong others. Modi said, "In order to unlock the huge potential in the area of merchandising, the BCCI proposes to create brands and logos incorporating properties based on the event calender."

Regarding television broadcast rights, the BCCI says that the terms for the public broadcaster will now be codified and defined while the signal to transmitters will have to be encrypted. The principle of revenue sharing would be adopted while marketing rights for it would have a minimum guarantee. Satellite rights would be sold separately and will exclude DTH, internet, video, mobile telephony, among others.

The BCCI has decided to award radio rights on a non-exclusive basis to All India Radio (AIR), free of cost keeping in view the role played by AIR in the yesteryears. It has also decided to sell broadband rights based on territory and on a revenue sharing basis. It will set-up its own portal through an outsourced agency to generate revenue, not only for live matches but also for archival purposes like footage, videos, interviews, memorabilia etc.

To give the BCCI a platform to directly interface with consumers, the potential of mobile telephony will now utilised — SMS, MMS, video imagery and gaming will reach out to the consumers on a large scale. DVDs, VCDs, CD ROMs are all opportunities that would be used by the BCCI to tap into a new customer market and reach out to a wider audience base.