New Delhi, Nov 3: In a surprise move, public broadcaster Prasar Bharati outbid its rival Nimbus and grabbed the marketing rights for Doordarshan for the entire India-Pakistan cricket series starting Monday.

The takeover followed Nimbus coming round to the negotiating table and agreeing to provide live telecast to Doordarshan for the series.

The bidding, which started last night and concluded early this morning, took place in sealed envelopes. Prasar Bharati staked Rs 81.25 crore, against the Rs 75 crore of Nimbus.

Prasar Bharati also acquired the exclusive rights for live radio commentary of the series for which it will pay $ 10,000 to Nimbus for each of the five One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and three Test matches.

Nimbus had bought the media rights from BCCI for telecast of cricket matches for a whopping $ 612 million for four years.

So far Nimbus has been marketing DD along with its Neo Sports channel to the advertisers. Having won the bid, now Prasar Bharati will have the revenue management control of the airtime sold to the advertisers.

"Till now, we had no clue of what kind of package deals Nimbus was offering to the advertisers on DD's behalf. Now we will know what were the spot-buy rates and we will sell it at a much higher rate," a senior Information and Broadcasting Ministry official said.

The ministry sources said Nimbus not only agreed to provide live feed but also was obliged to provide to Doordarshan the best feed it gives to any channel of the cricket series. (Agencies)

More News	Published on Nov 3rd, 2007
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