Tender for Worldwide Media Rights
BCB reviewing clauses
The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is in the process of rethinking some tough clauses following a poor response to their international tender for worldwide media rights.
The board has already extended the timeline for obtaining tender documents and submission of tenders by another seven days in order to be able to review all the reasons that has led to the poor response by the companies. They have also called for an emergency meeting today to discuss how they can bring some leniency on some of their clauses to allow them to attract more companies to buy their television broadcast and marketing rights. This is a major source of income for the richest sports federation in the country.
“Everything will be reviewed in the meeting. Right at this moment it’s not possible for me to elaborate anything regarding this tender issue,” said BCB’s acting CEO Nizamuddin Chowdhury yesterday.
The board was forced to extend the date as, according to sources, only two companies including Ten Sports bought the schedule before the last date on August 30.
As per the new timing, one can buy the schedule until September 6 and the last date for dropping the tender would be September 12 but the time may be further extended if needed because the board is extremely cautious about the deal following on from their bitter experience with Nimbus.
The BCB floated the tender for a TV deal from November 1, 2012 to April 30, 2016 after a strong committee headed by its vice-president Ahmed Sajjadul Alam prepared a guideline for the new TV deal. The troublesome six-year agreement with the international marketing agency Nimbus ended on March 2012.
This time the board is very much cautious about the tender procedure as they want to make sure that they will not make the same mistakes that they did when they made the deal with Nimbus.
It was learnt that the BCB is seriously thinking about the removal of a clause which stated that only companies with five years of experience can buy the bid papers. This clause has made several prominent companies ineligible for participation in the bidding.
Nimbus is automatically disqualified from bidding for the new rights after BCB added a clause stating that any companies having a financial dispute with the board would be ineligible to take part in the tender process.
Previously, the Board had already initiated a legal action against Nimbus to realize the outstanding amount. A staggering $56.88 million deal was made in October 2006 but BCB is yet to realize a significant portion of that sum from Nimbus due to some loopholes in the long-term agreement.
That bitter experience has made the Board err on the side of caution this time around but as things stand, the BCB is desperate to make the TV deal as soon as possible as the home series against West Indies is scheduled for November.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
