Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Cabinet decision may lead to reduction in investments, says ESPN

Story on Malayala Manorama: Cabinet decision may lead to reduction in investments: ESPN

ESPN's RC Venkateish is the most outspoken industry leader so far on this issue of Indian cabinet rigging the sports rights field in favour of Prasar Bharati.

Terming this move as "extremely disheartening and not fair", he further says "We will have to look at what is notified before moving further on the issue. Legal option, if at all required, will be the very, very last option."

He talks of reduction in investment and not considering several sporting properties at all. I personally believe private sports channels will be unviable in the present scenario and this will wipe out several sporting bodies in India, and also impoverish BCCI in the long run. No one is eventually a winner.

More than this, the whole thing looks palpably unethical. Any law passed with retrospective effect reeks of bad intention on the part of the government. This Manmohan Singh government did that in case of excise duty payments in the ITC issue, and now again.

Previous articles:
Prasar Bharati wants matches involving Pak, Aus, Eng as well!
Channels will lose Rs. 350 crores
Tracking Government's Sports Rights policies
DD to get feed of vital sports events from all channels


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