The Hindu Business Line : BCCI plans to retain all rights to content

JUST before floating tenders for acquisition of telecast rights, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today said that it will retain the intellectual property rights (IPR) to all the content produced or sourced by it.

After a meeting of the Working Committee, Mr Lalit Modi, Vice-President of BCCI, said that Doordarshan will have to carry the feed as provided by the Board and will not be able to insert advertisements.

He also said that the Board was not opposed to the Government's decision making it mandatory for sports broadcasters to share the feed of cricket matches with the national broadcaster.

"From now on, all news channels will directly enter into a contract with the Board for content and carry the BCCI logo. While there will be some seconds of footage made available free-of-cost, for the extra footage the Board will bring out a rate card soon after studying the guidelines for the Olympic and Commonwealth Games. We have had discussions with broadcasters and they are happy with this decision," he added.

So far, news channels have been borrowing footage from the broadcaster that had the rights to the event.

Mr Modi said that the Board will produce the matches through an outsourced entity and will directly enter into contract with anchors, presenters, statisticians, and so on.

The Board will be inviting separate bids for satellite, broadband, Internet, mobile telephony, and radio rights. Companies would be permitted to bid for all these rights.

Along with this, the Board is of the opinion that cricket is not news but entertainment. Therefore, the Board would invite bids from private FM radio companies for broadcasting cricket in various languages. Prasar Bharati had earlier pointed out that the FM radio norms prohibits private radio channels from airing news and current affairs.

Six companies - Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Pantaloon, Slazenger, and Sahara - have picked up the tender forms for branding of the non-leading arm of the players' shirts and apparel licensee.

Clarifying on the Air Sahara win, Mr Modi said that the company was free to use Sahara or any other brand name on the chest and leading arm of the shirts.

Meanwhile, the new players' contracts will be signed after the Ahmedabad Test.

Mr Modi said that players would get 26 per cent of the Board's total revenues and not just the logo money. Thirteen per cent would go to Team India and the remaining 13 per cent would go to domestic cricketers.