In a surprise move, public broadcaster Prasar Bharati outbid its rival Nimbus and grabbed the marketing rights of Doordarshan for entire India-Pakistan cricket series starting on Monday.
The takeover followed after Nimbus came round to the negotiating table and agreed to provide live telecast to Doordarshan for the series.
The bidding, which started on Friday night and concluded early on Saturday morning, took place in sealed envelopes. Prasar Bharati staked Rs 81.25 crore against Rs 75 crore of Nimbus.
Prasar Bharati also acquired the exclusive rights for live radio commentary of the series for which it will pay $10,000 to Nimbus for each of the five one-day internationals and three Test matches.
Nimbus had bought the media rights from BCCI for telecast of cricket matches for a whopping sum of $612 million for four years.
So far, Nimbus has been marketing DD along with its Neo Sports channel to the advertisers. Having won the bid, Prasar Bharati now will have the revenue management control of the airtime sold to advertisers.