The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has decided to float a fresh tender for its worldwide media rights after the failure of negotiations with local media conglomerate Virgo Media Limited.
The media company, which owns TV’s Channel 9, was asked to raise its original bidding value, worth 6 million dollars, in order to match the offer made by Sporty Solutionz, an Indian consortium. The Indian company, which had offered a bid worth 15 million dollars last week, was declared ineligible as it had not provided a bank guarantee of 2.5 million dollar — a key clause of the tender.
“Since Virgo Media couldn’t match our proposal, the tender is no longer valid. They were given time till 18 September. We have now decided to go for a fresh tender,” said BCB media committee chairman Jalal Yunus.
A total of four companies including Ten Sports and Sony had originally purchased the tender documents but Sporty Solutionz and Virgo Media Limited were the only companies who submitted their offers by the deadline.
The BCB had earlier floated the tender for TV rights for the period of November 1, 2012 to April 30, 2016 durng which time Bangladesh are scheduled to play 18 Test matches, 46 one-day internationals and five Twenty20 internationals as per the International Cricket Council’s Future Tours Programme.
-With The Daily Star input
