Following yesterday‘s announcement made by B4U Networks that it had secured the terrestrial telecast rights for the FIFA soccer World Cup from Taj Sports, the promoter company of sports channel Ten Sports, there has been a clarification issued.

Peter Hutton, V-P Programming, Ten Sports, said today: "It would be incorrect to say that B4U has the terrestrial rights to the World Cup. Our discussions with them are limited to the airtime sales of highlights being shown after 11 pm on Doordarshan and there is no deal as yet with Doordarshan to show such highlights."

When contacted Debashish Dey, chief distribution officer, B4U, stated that "we have acquired the rights for a six-hour deferred terrestrial telecast on Doordarshan of four matches and the opening and closing ceremonies." The matches that will be shown in their entirety are the opening match, the two semi-finals and the finals. For the other 60 matches that will be played during the tournament, one-hour highlight capsules would be aired at 11 pm, Dey said. "In all probability we will be buying 11-12 pm slots on DD and telecasting the highlights," he added.

Spurred by stupendous success of its Playwin Lottery, Subhash Chandra‘s Essel group is moving its golden goose to fresh pastures.
A variant of Playwin‘s Super Lotto which is under the Sikkim state lottery, will be introduced in the next two months with the state lotteries of the governments of Maharashtra and Karnataka. The coming week will also see corporate tie-ups and co-branding exercises by Playwin, says Playwin marketing vice-president Sanjay Yashroi.

The company is also planning to double the number of its terminals from the present 700 in the next two to three months, says Yashroi. While Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are the strongest states in terms of response to Super Lotto, it‘s the five north-eastern states including Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh which are still to catch on, he says. Sikkim itself has only 10 terminals, with eight located in Gangtok itself.

Response to the online lottery has registered an increase of 150 per cent over the base in the nine weeks since it started, says Yashroi. While the first draw drew three million responses, the latest one on 23 May drew 7.5 million responses.

The latest winner of the jackpot of Rs 86.1 million announced yesterday, remains a mystery though. Yashroi claims that the winner is either still unaware of the results or is too overawed to react to the news and hence has not come forward to claim the booty. The online system enables the company to track the winning ticket to the city in which it was sold instantly, but Playwin is not divulging the details till the winner volunteers to collect his prize, Yashroi said.

It was in January 2001 that faith channel Aastha set a landmark of sorts with the live telecast from Allahabad of the 45-day religious mega-event - the Maha Kumbh Mela. There is no comparison in terms of scale but Aastha is currently broadcasting the "Ram Katha" by Sant Morari Bapu live from Mauritius.
Scheduled as a nine day telecast from 18 May, the "katha" (religious discourse in a story format) is being held at Hindu House, Port Louis, Mauritius. The venue of the "katha" has been established with the objective of propagation of Hindu Dharma, says the channel. This broadcast, says an official release, is particularly significant because it is for the first time that any "katha" will be telecast live on a satellite television channel.

An official release states that the show will be viewed by people in 156 countries across the world - in Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The telecast will also provide glimpses of Mauritian life, culture and the natural beauty of the island state.

Over 1,000 devotees, mainly from the UK, USA, Europe, East and South Africa and India, are expected to be present for the "katha".

Mauritius was chosen as a venue because nearly 54 per cent of the 1.2 million citizens in the country are of Indian origin, the release says.