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The Prasar Bharati has finalized UK-based Satellite Information Service Live (SIS) as its official broadcaster for the next October’s Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. As a host broadcaster for the 12-day event starting October 3 next year, Prasar Bharati had earlier called for bids from international broadcasters to telecast the event in high-definition mode.

SIS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Satellite Information Services (Holdings) Ltd and is owned by a combination of leisure and financial investors. It has formed a consortium with SIS Broadcast and Satellite Information Services Limited as lead partner for the event.

The decision comes ahead of the World Broadcasters’ Summit, which is scheduled to be held in the Capital on October 26.The summit will see participation of all broadcasters from Commonwealth nations on one platform. The discussion forums would enable many countries’ broadcasters to interact about each other’s preparations for telecasting the event. Doordarshan officials said Prasar Bharati wanted to finalise the Games broadcaster before this meeting to streamline broadcasting issues with the selected company and move ahead with finalising other aspects of the event.

While the contract size of this deal is not known, estimates suggest any international production company that covers sports events involving a host of nations — like the Olympics or Asian Games — for 15 days tend to charge between $400 million and $500 million or even higher.

Earlier, in July, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had short listed five of the 10 companies that had bid for the rights to broadcast the event. The five selected were International Games Broadcast Services from Switzerland, Satellite Information Service Live (UK), Nimbus Sports International Pvt Ltd of Singapore, Nimbus Communications Ltd of Mumbai in collaboration with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Big Productions of the ADAG Group.

It may be recollected that one of the pre-qualifications for hosting the Commonwealth Games next year specified that host broadcaster Doordarshan had to produce an international feed in HDTV format.

(Source: delhilive.com)