Ten Sports-Sony deal: What's in it for Sony?

It will have significant bulk in the sports bouquet to challenge Star India

Star India's undoubted monopoly in the sports broadcasting world may be under threat if the buyout talks between N P Singh-led Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) buying out Ten Sports, the sports channel cluster under Taj Television acquired almost a decade back by Subhash Chandra's Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited go through. While it will mean an exit from sports broadcasting for Chandra as of now, SPN will have significant bulk in the sports bouquet to challenge Star India.

For one, SPN will add five sports channels to its portfolio, which can be easily re-branded and re-packaged in time for the 2017 edition of the IPL. With these the SPN sports cluster will have nine channels across standard and high definition feeds, giving competition to and in fact surpassing Star India's bouquet of eight channels. More channels will not only mean more advertising inventory on a big ticket property like the IPL, it will also give SPN the bandwidth to experiment with multi-language feeds, a strategy the network started with the FIFA World Cup in 2014.

The deal also gives SPN access to media rights to many golfing events, matches under most African cricket boards and the PCB and US Open. This will help SPN bolster its property offering in addition to the IPL (which comes up for review in 2017), NBA, FIFA, Euro and Futsal events. Additionally, Ten Sports enjoys a strong presence in the West Asia and African countries, which will provide SPN to expand its presence in these markets.

There could be a flip side to the deal for SPN as well. "From Zee's point of view, it's a sweet deal. Who would not want to get a loss making investment off their hands? But most of the rights to cricket boards and some other properties under the Ten Sports portfolio expire in a year at max two," says a known person on the condition of anonymity.

Both Zee and SPN refused to comment on the matter. A company spokesperson from Zee said in an emailed response: "From time to time, we keep exploring strategic opportunities for entering new businesses or in our existing businesses. However, as a matter of policy we do not comment on media speculations." SPN sang a similar tune responding to Business Standard queries saying: "As a matter of policy, we choose to not comment on speculation."