I&B min seeks Sports Act amendment to ensure maximum viewers watch events of national importance

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has proposed amending the 2007 Sports Act to ensure that the largest number of viewers have access to broadcast of sporting events of national importance, officials said Tuesday.

As per the provisions of the Sports Act, the live feed received by Prasar Bharati from the content rights owners or holders is only for the purpose of re-transmission of the said signals on Doordarshan's own terrestrial and DTH network and not for cable operators or other networks, they said.

As such the viewers, who do not have DD FreeDish or Doordarshan's terrestrial network, are either unable to watch these sporting events or are compelled to watch them on highly-priced sports channels, thus defeating the objective of the Sports Act, officials said.

With a view to give the largest number of viewers access to broadcast of sporting events of national importance, the ministry proposes to amend section 3(1) of the Sports Act to ensure mandatory sharing of the signals of such sporting events with "other networks, where it is mandatory to show the Doordarshan channels as per the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995", according to a ministry notice, seeking feedback from people and the stakeholders on the draft bill that carries the amendments to the Sports Act.