ESPN Star Sports will sell advertisement spots on Doordarshan for the upcoming India-Pakistan cricket series, having outbid the public broadcaster in minimum guarantee revenues.

ESPN, which holds the telecast rights for the one-day international and twenty20 series, in a meeting on Saturday also agreed to provide Doordarshan match feed without any embedded advertisement for terrestrial transmission.

With advertising rates for the two T20 matches between the neighbours touching a record 10 lakh, media planners buying airtime for advertisers say the deal is a win-win and will help the public broadcaster rake in revenues from the series. ESPN will give one quarter of the revenues to Doordarshan.

The deal covers both the Pakistan series and the one-day international and twenty20 series with England next month.

Tripurari Sharan, director general at Doordarshan, said, "ESPN said that there will be 'digital commercial enhancement' of the feed coming from the BCCI." This meant logos and other promotional material of the sponsors were to be part of the feed. "We wrote to the I&B ministry and the ministry wrote to ESPN and BCCI saying that it was not on," he added.

The two broadcasters today began selling airtime for the first India-Pakistan series in more than five years. The series starts next week.

ESPN did not comment on the issue and even BCCI officials could not be reached for comments.

ESPN made Rs 22-crore minimum guarantee bid to sell ad spots on behalf of Doordarshan to advertisers for the India-Pakistan and India-England series. Doordarshan had bid Rs 18 core.
According to the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007, it is mandatory for the rights holder of any sporting event of national importance to share the feed with the public broadcaster. Doordarshan, in turn, is required to share 75 per cent of the advertisement revenue with the rights holder.

The party responsible for selling advertisements, called revenue management company, is decided through a bidding process. Doordarshan could not make any profit during the India-Sri Lanka T20 series earlier this year. Doordarshan was the revenue management company as it had bid 20 crore, while ESPN's bid was only Rs 2 crore.

Jawahar Sircar, chief executive officer of Prasar Bharati, said, "We struggled and managed to reach bid amount; only to hand over 75 per cent to ESPN and lose revenue from our normal telecasts."

Meanwhile, ESPN has started marketing the India-Pakistan series. Media buyers said the private broadcaster is demanding 10 lakh for a 10-second spot for T20 and 6 lakh for ODIs. Doordarshan can garner around 1 lakh for ODIs and around Rs 1.5 lakh for T20s, they said.

"The series is a very sought-after media property. It may not be a very efficient buy, but will have a big impact considering the hype and the fact that the two nations are playing after a long time," Navin Khemka, managing partner of media buying firm Zenith Optimedia, said.

"Advertisers who are looking to ride on the hype of the holiday season will be willing to pay premium rates on ESPN. Doordarshan also offers opportunity for smaller advertisers," he said.

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