Letter to BS: Should consider revenue earning potential of sporting events

This refers to the editorial “An unsporting proposal” (October 29). The proposal of the information and broadcasting ministry to amend the Sports Broadcasting Signals Act, 2007, needs to take into account the advertising revenue earning potential of sporting events of national importance and the ways to suitably compensate the private broadcaster. The following points may be considered while firming up the proposed amendment:

(a) Besides sharing the advertising revenue in a certain ratio with the private broadcaster, the public broadcaster must also pay them an additional amount for events such as the World Cup, Olympics etc that have huge potential to earn advertising revenues;

(b) The public broadcaster may be allowed to air the feed received from private broadcaster only on terrestrial network as airing the same on cable and DTH platform would adversely affect the private broadcaster's revenues. However, in case of airing the feed on a network other than terrestrial, the private broadcaster may be adequately compensated;

(c) There is a threat that a private broadcaster might increase the subscription fee to compensate the possible revenue losses in case the feed is aired on cable and DTH by the public broadcaster. The ultimate sufferer, in this case, would be the consumers using cable and DTH. This reinforces the point made above.

Sanjeev Kumar Singh,  Jabalpur

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