IT was one dramatic irony after another. First, the PCB had used lucid initiatives to reel in the New Zealanders to come and play cricket, yet the entire nation, bar the few who were at Gaddafi Stadium, were left in the dark as the Dhamaka Series exploded in the face of PCB. Millions sat twiddling their thumbs and listening to studio updates from an equally blinded panel out of Dubai which blundered through, once worrying for quite a few minutes that the final score of 301 may prove insurmountable when actually the innings had closed for 291.
Second, had the Kiwis stuck to their decision to cancel the trip, there would have been no broadcast chaos and the chairman would have been seen to resign on his own terms at a time of his choosing. As it transpired it will remain a mystery whether he had actually resigned a week earlier as he claimed or whether the mismanagement of the telecast rights issue sent tempers into orbit instead of the cricket.
It was obvious the matter would be resolved before the second match. That was never the case in point. Too much depended on the signals going out from Monday morning. What needs to be explored is why it was ever allowed to take place in an age when the world is at the tip of one’s fingers 24 hours a day and communications take place in real time. Funny we can make peace with India but not with each other.
The President has ordered an enquiry. It is likely to begin from where it all began, Gaddafi Stadium. What is likely to be asked is whether the standard operating procedure was followed when inviting bids. Rameez claimed that it was public knowledge that the series was up for grabs and that PTV should have inquired. Considering cricket is now a seller’s market and this is the age of capitalism, he has a point. PTV should have shed off its wait and watch strategy and written to PCB that it was interested in bidding, having the largest reach. So could they have the criteria for approval?
At the same time it can be said that at this level and in an organization like the PCB, some formalities have to be followed in announcing a tender. Certain criteria for bids have to be laid out and only its fulfilment qualifies interested parties to go to the next step of sending in their proposals.
Whether the tender was advertised or not, the PCB management have to realize in future that financial strength alone does not qualify a bidder, no matter what the nature of the project. Anyone can come up with the money. The world is full of it. What the world is not full of are qualified bidders with documents in place.
Claiming that the PCB needs not to look beyond the highest bid is being managerially naive. Indeed, the first requirement that the management of any organization looks for when selecting a supplier or franchisee is whether he can deliver their product the way they intend it to. Can he exercise the quality control during the delivery? Will he harm the image? For instance, would the marketing head of any organization risk launching his new product with a new distributor and then wait that he obtains a loan from a leasing company to buy the delivery vans? Still, every private channel operating today does appear to have the grasp of cricket production, and the threshold has always been reached. More exposure to our production people will lead to world class delivery.
On the day itself, considering some sort of MoU had been arrived at, between the two channels, one can’t hold PCB responsible for the blackout. It was simply that each side claims the other became unreasonable. The PCB executives at most could have used their offices to preempt the impasse. Perhaps they too underestimated the stakes for each of the broadcasters.
It is saddening that PCB landed in this mess. Both the Chairman and CEO of Pakistan Cricket Board need to be appreciated for the magnificent statesmanship they have displayed in bringing foreign teams back to Pakistan. In the end it was simply a case of everybody assuming somebody had taken care of everything that led to nothing on TV screens on Blank Saturday.
On the government front, it can be said that they perhaps underestimated the marketing prospects of cricket that was read cleverly by the private sector. PTV is complaining about rights being given to private parties but it never showed serious interest of bidding for cricket rights in the first place last year. They were nowhere in the tender when PCB invited bids for the next five years cricket from Pakistan at the expiry of the TWI contract in 2002. They continue to give most of the technical support, including half the camera crew and the OB Van (for the international matches outside Karachi) but don’t want to bid for the rights!
In today’s marketing world they only have to appoint one marketing company to sell worldwide rights to other channels so its not that they have to invest in a global marketing department with all related overheads. And for the production there are companies that do all the production for a fee. This is well covered by the potential revenues from selling airtime and global rights.
With the new, more professional management in place at PTV since earlier this year, fully aware of how this system works, this bidding for rights is a real possibility when the contract that Ten Sports has with PCB expires reportedly in 2008. For the moment the right holders should be facilitated as official guests in the investment sector.
Having said that, there was something that the Information Minister said in his press conference last Sunday that must have made the Ten Sports management stand up and hold their head. It would make for black comedy if their contract was to be brought out from the fracas in which they stood back and watched. In fact they themselves have bought the rights for India and UAE for this series.
What will have pushed the panic buttons in Sharjah was a statement from Sheikh Rashid to the effect that PTV was being designated as the channel that would, in future, have the terrestrial rights for cricket within Pakistan and that foreign channels would only be allowed to have rights outside Pakistan. Hopefully, he meant cricket other than already scheduled. It would reflect badly on the image of Pakistan if PCB’s contract with Ten Sports was now to be pondered while still in its infancy. These are matters that should have been considered before 2002. This is not the time to cry foul and ask for our goodies to be returned. It is not ethical. It is not done in the world of business.
Perhaps the new management in PTV is now cognizant of the fact that a golden goose was allowed to walk away from under the noses of the previous set up. Right next door in India, there was this battle for cricket rights in 1999 and a couple of the broadcasting industries’ global giants bid for the game. But so did Doordarshan.
Their bid of IRs224 crores, for five years cricket rights from BCCI was the highest by far. They won the contract on merit despite the state run channel having been written off after the satellite revolution of the mid 1990s. It’s an open market and all it takes is selling world rights to one marketing company or at most to one in each continent. The revenues are such that these companies will literally fly over and camp for a month at their own expense to get the global rights.
In the just concluded triangular series across the border between India, Australia and New Zealand the real winner was not Australia, but Doordarshan. Its marketing division sold spot buys for IRs75,000 for 10 seconds on DD Sports and IRs60,000 for 10 seconds on DD National for the tri-series. Their revenue from selling airtime in India of the recently concluded Test and ODIs is reported to have exceeded IRs90 crores ($20 million). And their annual payment to BCCI comes to IRs45 crores per year.
After deducting expenses (rights fee to BCCI, agency commissions, production costs, opportunity costs of other programming) Doordarshan is calculated to have made IRs10 crores in profits! Add to that their revenues from global rights, and the size of the pie can be picturized.
Pakistan may be a country with a population base which is 15 per cent that of India’s, but the global market remains the same. So, it doesn’t matter that we do not have a big consumer market as India’s to generate large revenues from companies that have relatively lower marketing budgets compared to Indian conglomerates. The revenue from the international market which constitutes a major portion remains the same whether the game is going from Pakistan or India.
Ten Sports is paying $42 million to PCB for the five years, averaging around $8 million (Rs464 million rupees a year). It goes to their credit that they are paying the same amount as Doordarshan for a market one-seventh the size of India. They have also been generous in giving their signals to PTV and the national channel makes a hefty profit from the cricket broadcast in Pakistan. If PTV aspires to go for a bigger role they will need to pick up their laptops and calculators and venture out into the business world. All it takes is hard work and a vision. But you don’t get control until you want it. It is not easy but it can be done, and they could end up taking a higher risk with little incremental gain.
