Agency report
 
New Delhi, May 31: Zee TV Wednesday cancelled its five-year contract with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) following a new law on sports broadcasting, putting a question mark on the three-match one-day series between India and South Africa in late June.

"We have cancelled our deal with the BCCI because of their step-motherly treatment towards us. While we are still open for discussions, it seems that the board is in no mood to discuss the issue with us," Ashish Kaul, senior vice-president of Zee, told IANS.

The cancellation of the five-year deal, signed last year and covering only offshore matches, worth around $200 million comes after the sports channel asked the board for re-negotiation of the price.

"After the government passed the sports broadcasting signal bill, we will suffer huge losses. So we wrote to the BCCI to re-negotiate the original price, but they never responded. On the other hand, they have been negotiating with Nimbus on this issue as well. So this is clearly a case of step-motherly attitude towards us, which prompted us to take this step," said Kaul.

According to the new act on sports broadcasting, it is mandatory for every broadcaster to share live feed without advertisements for all ties involving India with national broadcaster Doordarshan.

All sports channels in the country want encryption of the live feeds because un-encrypted signals of Doordarshan are also received in Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Malaysia and may result in loss of over Rs.10 billion for sports broadcasters.