There is a new war brewing in sports broadcasting. Between private sports broadcasters and state-owned Prasar Bharati. And if the latter is victorious, private sports broadcasters stand to lose. Substantially.

Earlier this week, the information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry proposed an amendment to the decade-old Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007. The Act requires private sports broadcasters such as Star India and Sony to share their live feeds of sporting events that are of national importance with the public broadcaster. Prasar Bharati, which runs television network Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio, then retransmits the broadcast signals on its terrestrial network and its own direct-to-home (DTH) platform, DD Free Dish.

AUTHOR

Harveen Ahluwalia

In her last assignment, Harveen was at Mint, the business daily published by HT Media. At Mint, where she spent about two years, she wrote stories on retail, food and the media business. Harveen is a B.Com (H) graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. She has a diploma in journalism from the Times School of Journalism. Like many folks at The Ken, Harveen talks and tweets a lot. When she isn’t writing or reading, she likes to sketch and doodle. She can be reached at harveen at the-ken dot com.

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