Pay-television broadcaster Gazi TV has acquired the Bangladesh Cricket Board’s worldwide media rights in a six-year deal through April 2020 worth $20.02m (€14.4m).
The BCB announced the tender process at the end of last month but Gazi soon stood as the only realistic contender in Friday’s bidding as rival pay-television company Mediacom quoted a price lower than the governing body’s $20m stipulation.
BCB president Nazmul Hassan told the ESPN Cricinfo website: "There were two participants, one of whom didn't meet our floor price so they became automatically ineligible. Gazi TV has paid just more than our floor price, and their papers have been okayed. As they have no financial problems, we are giving them this work. BCB will receive from them $20.02m (net) without production cost. I don't look at history, but we are satisfied. We believe that we received (the bid) according to the current market situation. If nobody had taken part in the bid, it would have put us in an embarrassing position."
The Nimbus Communications agency previously held the BCB’s rights for six years from November 2006, including a minimum guarantee of $56.88m. Nimbus declined to extend its contract after it claimed the BCB had failed to provide the promised number of tours during its six-year duration, while payment disputes dogged the cooperation.
Under the new tender, the BCB projects Bangladesh will play 25-30 Tests, 40-45 one-day internationals and 10-15 Twenty20 internationals, with commercially attractive home series against India slated for later this year, 2015 and 2020.
Gazi TV vice-chairman Gazi Golam Murtoza is a BCB director but the board’s marketing committee chairman Kazi Inam Ahmed insisted he was not party to the discussions at any stage.
"We want to be clear that, during the entire process our committee worked on, the BCB director who is related to the Gazi family has signed legal papers that said he will not be present during any board meeting where we will discuss the TV rights deal," Ahmed said. "We have ensured that our process remained transparent, and since everything took place through open bidding, there was no chance of corruption."