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It’s war
in the cricket space, with more number crunching happening in the
broadcasting arena than on the field and off it. After losing out
to two broadcasters in acquiring rights to big-time sporting events
such as World Cup Cricket and the FIFA World Cup, ESPN Star Sports
has announced a “clean sweep of cricket rights”. ESPN
Star Sports has acquired exclusive telecast rights for all international
cricket to be played in five countries till 2008.
While Sony Entertainment
Television (SET) is said to have forked out around $250 million
to bag the satellite telecast rights to ICC Cricket 2002 and World
Cup 2003 & 2007, sources put ESPN Star Sports’ cost for
acquiring the five-country multi-platform cricket rights spanning
five years at around $200 million. Neither Sony nor ESPN have confirmed
the figures.
Calling it one
of the world’s biggest ever acquisitions of international cricket
rights, ESPN Software India managing director Manu Sawhney gave
details of the matches at a press conference. The rights are for
all international cricket from Australia, South Africa, New Zealand,
Zimbabwe and England from 2003 to 2008. With this acquisition, the
network will now air 1,108 days of live and exclusive cricket over
the next five years, Sawhney said.
In terms of
number of international cricket matches to be beamed on the network,
ESPN Star Sports is way ahead of Sony, Ten Sports and Doordarshan,
the other channels showing cricket in the country. But so far as
popularity goes, the World Cup tops the charts. But maintained Sawhney,
“With this acquisition, the networks will now be able to showcase
more live international cricket than the entire competition put
together.” Against ESPN’s 1,108, SET, Ten Sports and DD
have 153, 184 and 80 days of international cricket, respectively.
Not just that, there’s statistics on offer on youth cricket,
international cricket, India cricket and even on A, B and C class
cricket, and each broadcaster’s pie in that.
Talking numbers,
ESPN Star Sports scores over others in bagging multi-platform telecast
rights too. The network has rights for cable and satellite TV, terrestrial
TV, enhanced television and even radio in the region. It hasn’t
decided on what to do with the terrestrial rights though. Even as
DD is the only network with terrestrial channels, it hasn’t
begun any negotiations with the public broadcaster for selling the
terrestrial rights. For comparison DD will share the honours with
Sony in telecasting World Cup Cricket 2003 & 2007 and ICC Cricket
2002. While DD has paid around $22.5 million to acquire the terrestrial
rights to the important matches in the tournaments, Sony has bagged
the satellite rights to all the tournaments for around $250 million.
Interestingly,
ESPN Star Sports calls itself cricket ke asli badshah. One of the
reasons for calling itself that: Batting sensation Sachin Tendulkar
was appointed the brand ambassador for ESPN Star Sports. But, Sony
could counter that one. Sony’s brand ambassador Kapil Dev beat
Tendulkar to win the Indian Cricketer of the Century award given
by UK-based Wisden recently!
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