New TV guidelines: Will take Rs 5-cr hit per event, say sports channels

The new uplinking and downlinking guidelines, released by the I&B ministry on Wednesday, may have caught sports broadcasters such as Disney-Star, Sony, Zee and Viacom18 on the wrong foot.

The broadcasters were expecting the government to relax the processing fee of Rs 100,000 for live telecast of events in their channels every day, introduced by the government five years ago. However, according to industry executives, the government has not waived the processing fee, implying that players would continue to incur significant costs due to this.

“The processing fee results in an outflow of at least Rs 4-5 crore per sporting event for a network. Sports broadcasting is about live sporting.