‘Ten Sports’ to get Lankan TV rights till 2020
View(s):It all points to a Ten Sports – Sri Lanka Cricket TV deal that will take the country’s international screening rights from April 2013 to 2020.
On Thursday a high powered Sri Lanka Cricket official team met and decided that Ten Sports is the only safe TV provider for their International rights. Along with Ten Sports Nimbus and Neo TV had applied for the rights when the bids were opened, but now it seems that it would be Ten Sports who held the ‘first refusal right’ who will get the green light.
A top SLC official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Sunday Times, “It seems that we will have to settle with Ten Sports for our rights till 2020. We tried Nimbus once before but, the deal ended in disaster.”
In 2001, SLC was forced to pay US$5 million in damages to Nimbus, after the board had breached its contract.
The Sri Lanka Cricket source confirmed that its Executive Committee considered an offer by the current rights holder for a sum of US$ 60 million, approximately Rs. 7.5 billion. However the figure quoted by the Dubai-based TV giant is less than half of what it offered in 2009 for a four-year period. In 2009 Ten Sports parted with US$ 65 million for the four-year period which ended on March 31, 2013.
The SLC official said, “At the moment we are in the process of trying to renegotiate the deal so that we would get something better than originally offered.”
However the deal will come into effect during the next home series where Sri Lanka will play against South Africa in July-August this year in 5 ODIs and 3 T-20s.
Early this year the team, led by incumbent president Upali Dharmadasa, wanted to close the deal with Ten Sports, owing to the prevailing clauses but had to defer the matter amidst protests from the Minister of Sports, who prevailed upon them to call for open bids. – SRP
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