Insanity Rediscovered

Now, from the India Broadband Forum posts I am realizing that Tata Sky DTH users are not getting the Nimbus’ Neo Sports channel.

This means they cannot see the ongoing India-West Indies series. Situation is more complicated because DD/Prasar Bharti is not getting the feeds as they have received in previous similar cases.

Now, we all know that Nimbus paid a lot of money to BCCI for getting the exclusive rights to cricket matches taking place in India.

And they have further invested heavily in setting up the infrastructure for the channel and other stuff.

They have to recover the money back. And they cannot do so if they have to provide the match feed to DD for free or a limited fee.

And BCCI is indeed in a pathetic situation despite knowing that cricket fans (I am definitely not one of them) in the country are not being able to see the match live on their television sets.

They have to support Nimbus against the government or the courts if they come out with the ruling that the channel would indeed have to share the feed with Doordarshan channels.

And if that indeed happens, Nimbus is definitely going after BCCI suing them to get a majority of the fee back for not ending up getting the feed exclusively.

Now, Nimbus is also charging a hefty fee (around Rs. 50 I think) for their channel. Tata Sky cannot accommodate this fee in their existing subscription fee for their subscribers. They can offer NEO SPORTS as a premium channel for additional cost. It’s not going to please a lot of their customers.

So, I believe that are just waiting for public actions to get the government or courts to get Nimbus to share their feed with DD so that they can avoid getting into a deal with Nimbus.

As for CAS users, they might be the happiest lot if they are indeed getting the channel for Rs. 5 only as per the TRAI’s ruling.

This opinion of mine is based on facts I gained from limited time I spent on the Indian Broadband Forum. It can be wrong, untrue, stupid or practically useless by the time you read this!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 01:48 pm and is filed under Fun, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Tags: Cricket, India, India Broadband Forum, Sports, Tata, TRAI