Tv Today, Doordarshan Lock Horns Over French Open Telecast

TV Today, a Living Media group company, has written to Doordarshan (DD) saying that it had been unjustifiably denied the marketing rights, without even inviting bids, of the French Open lawn tennis tournament.

The two finals of the tournament would be aired on DD network while the semi-finals would also be telecast on the sports channel ESPN.

The exclusive marketing rights of the matches to be telecast on the DD network have been awarded to Delhi-based Stracon India Pvt Ltd against a minimum guarantee of about Rs 63 lakh.

In addition, Stracon would share the revenue accruing from the additional free commercial time (FCT) in the ratio of 30:70.

 

TV Todays contention is that the marketing rights were awarded to Stracon without inviting bids. We were not even given an opportunity to bid though we had made our intentions clear on this as early as February, Living Medias executive director G. Krishnan said.

Doordarshan, on the contrary, contends that the TV Today proposal was not lucrative enough. TV Todays proposals did not mention any minimum guarantee, while Stracons offer does, a senior DD official said. According to Krishnan, TV Today had made three offers, including a minimum guarantee of Rs 63.70 lakh if the matches were telecast on DD-1. For DD-2, Rs 38.65 lakh was guranteed while for DD-1 and 2 combined Rs 42.75 lakh was guaranteed.

Stracon will be offered approximately 4,000 seconds of free commercial time for selling to the advertisers during the telecast of this years matches.