Mumbai: Nimbus Communications, the company that produces cricket feed for the BCCI, is now on the verge of launching a channel to telecast it. CNN-IBN checks out their subscription models and chances of success.
Nimbus will launch a cricket channel in October. It will kick off with the telecast of the Afro-Asian cup. Now that Nimbus has all the rights it will tailor make packages to suit different platforms.
Harish Thawani, Chairman Nimbus says, “We have a high definition feed fro DTH which will have multiple language options, 1 to 16 cameras following individual players. Basically a higher definition feed both in resolution as well as options. We will have a standard definition feed customised for pay TV on cable and then we have a basic feed for the DD customer.”
With rising content acquisition costs and tougher competition, many sports channels are struggling. Yet, Nimbus sees potential it will not just launch a cricket channel, but plans two more next year - a sports entertainment and a sports news-service channel.
The new cricket channel can be seen across Asia to Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, West Asia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
It has already raised Rs 135 crore from Deutsche Bank and will cough up about Rs 90 crore more from internal accruals to pay for the three channels.
Earlier this year Nimbus secured the right to be the live coverage production company for Indian cricket until 2010, paying a record $612 million.
But it did not have its own platform to broadcast India's home series against England earlier this year.
Comments
0 comment