Telecast champions to battle it out

By John Cheeran
The game is over, let the games begin.
Champions Trophy is over but real champions in contemporary cricket are just entering the fray for the biggest contest of them all -- broadcast rights.
Sport is for sponsors and advertisers and that means live sport is for television channel owners. Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) too has realised how powerful channels have become by seizing the live cricket telecast rights. BCCI have realised that channels are becoming more rich than themselves. No wonder then board's made its moves to have an own tv cannel, bcci tv.
Yesterday, India's Zee Telefilms Ltd. and ESPN-Star Sports submitted their bids for the global telecast rights of the International Cricket Council's matches from 2007-15.
Dubai-based Taj Television's Ten Sports and India's Nimbus Communications are also in the fray. ESPN Star is a venture of News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. News Corp. also has a distribution deal with Nimbus for the latter's sports channels in India until 2010.
Bids for the rights for the World Cups in 2011 and 2015, four Champions Trophy tournaments and Twenty-20 games could come in between $600 million to $800 million, with some suggesting figures as high as $1 billion.
The bid will be at least double the amount last time, and given that the Indian cricket board's rights were sold for more than $600 million, this would be more.
Sony Corp's Sony Entertainment Television (SET), the surprise winner of the ICC rights for the four years to 2007 for a reported $250 million, will not bid this time around.
The telecast rights to the Indian board's matches were awarded earlier this year to privately-owned Nimbus for $612 million for four years.
Make sure that you watch stars on tv, lest they starve!