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Tag: Mark Mascarenhas

  • ESPN purchases telecast rights for Bangladesh cricket from the late Mark Mascarenhas’ widow

    ESPN purchases telecast rights for Bangladesh cricket from the late Mark Mascarenhas’ widow

    Cricket rights are being bounced around like nobody’s business at the moment. ESPN Star Sports today announced it has secured broadcast rights for all international cricket to be played in Bangladesh till mid-2006.

    The announcement comes even before the dust has settled on Sony Entertainment’s announcement that it has grabbed the Indian TV rights for the next six years to broadcast ICC (International Cricket Council) cricket championships from under the nose of ESPN Star Sports as it were.

    The rights include over 90 days of international cricket from Bangladesh covering at least seven international tours by India, South Africa, West Indies, England, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Australia, an official release states.

    With the Bangladesh rights, ESPN Star Sports holds rights to cricket in all test playing countries except India and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka telecast rights, which were earlier with WSG Nimbus, are now reportedly with the promoter of Sharjah cricket Abdulrahman Bukhatir through his company Taj Sports.

    The tripartite agreement involving the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), WorldTel Inc. and ESPN STAR Sports, was signed by Mohammed Ali Asghar, president, BCB, Mrs. Karen Mascarenhas, representing the late Mark Mascarenhas’s WorldTel and Rik Dovey, managing director, ESPN Star Sports.

    BCB had earlier assigned the worldwide rights to all international cricket events to be played in Bangladesh to WorldTel for a reported $ 11.7 million covering nine home series.

    WorldTel was involved in a long-running dispute with Sony which had bought the exclusive television rights for a reported $ 17 million. There was a major standoff between Sony and WorldTel subsequently as it wanted the deal renegotiated. This led to Bangladesh’s maiden home series against Zimbabwe not being telecast abroad.

    The next series which involved Pakistan saw an arrangement being cobbled together wherein BTV was in charge of production and Ekushey TV (the first private broadcaster in Bangladesh) teaming up with Pakistan Television (PTV) for telecast of the matches.

    The million dollar question is what was paid out to secure the rights. That there were no takers for the rights at the rates that were being quoted is well known. It may well be that WorldTel has cut its losses in what appears to be a distress sale. The numbers being thrown around are somewhere in the region of $4 million.

  • Mark Mascarenhas – a controversial life cut short

    Mark Mascarenhas – a controversial life cut short

    The death of Mark Mascarenhas in a road accident near Nagpur over the weekend closed the chapter of a fiery albeit controversial personality who left his mark on the world of cricket broadcasting.


    A friend indeed – Mascarenhas with Sachin Tendulkar

    Mascarenhas shot into the limelight when he bagged the coveted telecast rights for 1996 World Cup cricket and then the 1999 ICC knockout championships in Kenya. 1996 also marked the beginning of another partnership – the signing of a breakthrough Rs 280-million deal with Sachin Tendulkar, which continued through the years despite ups and downs.

    An NRI settled in America, the 44-year-old Mascarenhas flew down frequently and cricket ensured that he kept up the links with India. The five-year contract between Tendulkar and WorldTel was renewed late last year for an undisclosed amount, believed to be in excess of Rs 500 million, setting a new benchmark in cricket. Mascarenhas was reportedly also planning to start a global chain of hotels carrying Tendulkar‘s name.

    The bespectacled, beefy Mascarenhas left India in 1976 at the age of 19 to go to the US to do his Masters in communication. As a student of Christ College, Bangalore, he had played alongside cricketers like Brijesh Patel, who was representing India at the time. Mark was reportedly a hard worker and excelled in TV production and showed considerable creative powers when he was doing his communication course in Mumbai. After the course, Mascarenhas spent 6 months at the BCC Centre in London, before enrolling in Graduate Communications in the US.


    Mascarenhas with his family

    A few years later, he channelised his interest for sports into a business proposition by grabbing cable rights for telecast of college football throughout the United States. In April 1993, Mascarenhas got wind of the fact that India was to stage the 1996 World Cup and the organising committee was looking for someone to buy the television rights of the tournament. Four months later, WorldTel had won the rights for the tournament, jointly hosted by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

    Three years after the event, the man who started WorldTel in 1989 after brief stints with radio broadcasting stations in the US, including WCBS, CBS‘s number one news radio station, found himself in the eye of a storm, accused of allegedly depriving Doordarshan of $4 million in respect of telecast rights for the International Cricket Council‘s knockout tournament in Dhaka in October 1998.

    His special skill in identifying underdeveloped sports markets made him a player to be reckoned with in a highly competitive, often cut-throat industry. When major US broadcasters showed little interest in televising non-US games during World Cup soccer in the early 90s, he bid for and won the rights. The profits earned from selling the rights to televise these matches to international broadcasters made him a millionaire. He then bought rights to the Alpine Ski World Cup, with similar results.


    Mascarenhas shared a close bond with both cricketers and cricket

    The cricket World Cup rights too were not easily obtained. Mascarenhas had to outfox veterans like Mark McCormack‘s IMG/TWI and Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp, which he did through a bid to the governing agency, PILCOM (Pakistan/India/Lanka Committee of Management). The deal included a $2.5 million down payment as part of a $ 10 million guarantee and won him the rights to bring the 1996 World Cup Cricket tournament to an international audience of over a billion people.

    Once won, Mascarenhas did not stinge on quality of the telecasts. He used eight cameras and four videotape machines for the Wills World Cup, and pressed into service 18 cameras and 16 videotape machines for the Wills International Cup in Dhaka, unprecedented in cricket coverage anywhere in the world. WorldTel set up offices in Bangalore, from where Mascarenhas managed the business of player management, production, and marketing of cricket events.

    Not one to lose an opportunity, Mascarenhas purchased a 344-mile gas pipeline network that was lying unused under the streets of Mumbai some years ago, hoping to convert it into an advanced telephone/cable television network capable of linking the city‘s half a million households and offices. The pipeline that was to ‘simultaneoulsy deliver gas and optical fibre‘, is currently caught up in red tape.

    Another venture the intrepid entrepreneur was reportedly engaged in was a partnership with Mick Jagger to bring live cricket to the Internet.