MUMBAI: Pubcaster DD Sports surprisingly garnered third position in broadcast audience research council’s (BARC) all India ratings for week 50 in the sports genre. The live feed of India versus Sri Lanka’s second ODI match helped the channel to climb up.
Star Sports 1 Hindi leads the chart with 20855 impressions (000s) sum followed by Star Sports 1 with 110690 impressions (000s) sum. DD Sports made an entry after 37 weeks in BARC all India ratings with 81011 impressions (000s) sum. Sony Ten 1 is in fourth position with 80695 impressions (000s) sum. We have second FTA channel in the list, Star Sports First with 57528 impressions (000s) sum.
DD Sports’ last appearance was in week 12 at the time of India versus Australia live test series. At that time DD Sports was at fifth slot with 26973 impressions (000s) sum. Private broadcasters are up in arms against sharing their live feed with the public broadcaster.
The Supreme Court on 22 August 2017 said that shared feed of sporting events can only be carried on the terrestrial network of Doordarshan or DD FreeDish and cannot be retransmitted to private cable and DTH operators. After this, in the month of September Prasar Bharti CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati through a tweet directed all the private DTH and cable operators not to telecast the sporting events’ live feed from Doordarshan that have originally been shared by the rights-holding private broadcasters.
In December some reports surfaced in the media that Star India would have to share the IPL telecasts with the pubcaster DD that will air the cricket matches on its terrestrial network and FTA DTH platform. This would be made possible as and when the government formally issues a directive as both the law and information & broadcasting ministries were being consulted under a regulation called the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007.
If the IPL is being shared between the private broadcaster and the pubcaster, we’ll have to see which one bowls us over with higher viewership.
Star India wins: SC disallows Prasar from retransmitting shared sports feed live
Prasar CEO reiterates implementation of SC verdict on DD's shared sports feed retransmission
Comment: Does Star stand to gain or lose by sharing IPL with DD?
