The sports broadcasting genre is heading towards a period of expansion and change. With one new entrant ready to make its presence in the next month or so (Zee Sports) and some noises being made about another (BCCI cricket channel), the challenge looks to be for players to monetise their properties by looking beyond just cricket.

The Dubai-based Ten Sports has been doing just that. Earlier this year it announced that it had renewed its deal with the WWE. More recently it signed on with FIH (International Hockey Federation) for exclusive broadcast rights to key international hockey events. On the distribution front, it joined the One Alliance and is putting in place an internal team.

Indiantelevision.com's Ashwin Pinto caught up with Taj Television vice-president programming Peter Hutton to get an update on all the happenings at Ten Sports.

Let’s start with what has been a red hot issue for a while now - India cricket. The result of the rights fiasco has left the BCCI to ponder launching its own channel. If that gets off the ground then the other players would be in serious trouble as that would limit the number of cricket properties available. And ad revenue would get splintered further. How well is Ten prepared for such a situation
The BCCI has not formally decided to launch the channel yet. It has been suggested by Mr (IS) Bindra and the committee is yet to take a decision.

As far as Ten Sports is concerned, we have been showing Indian home cricket in the Middle East and other Asian territories, and this should not be a problem even if the BCCI launches its own channel. Our key rights, whether they be cricket, wrestling, tennis or hockey, are all signed up for the long term, so we wouldn’t be concerned.

Could you briefly dwell on the manner in which Ten Sports' programming strategy evolved in 2004?
2004 was a vital year with us. A number of key rights were up for renewal. Not only did we succeed in holding off the competition on rights such as WWE, Sri Lankan cricket, the FIH hockey and the Ryder Cup golf, we also went on to secure new and important deals such as the US Open tennis and Italian football.

The key has been buying live, relevant sport that can be seen in prime time in India.

To what extent has the programming budget gone up?
Competition on rights has noticeably increased and the cost of rights are escalating in the key driver product. Among our latest acquisitions are the US Open tennis and World Cup hockey for both men and women.

We have recently renewed a huge amount of product including cricket, football and golf rights for the rest of the decade.

What are the factors that are pushing up the costs of sport production?
I don’t think they are increasing – if anything, the production costs are reducing as hardware becomes more readily available.

Ten Sports will now manage the production of the upcoming Prime Sports channel. With your growing portfolio of production and facilities, what key additions have you made to the production team?
We now produce and provide facilities for a range of channels in the Middle East, including Citruss TV, Al Waha, Arabian Travel, and Prime Sports as well as our production work for international distribution.

We are consistently upgrading our facilities and developing this area of our business, using our skills and rights to create a varied revenue stream. In fact, our main Dubai studio is completely booked out and we are in the process of opening more studio facilities.

For live events whether it is in cricket or soccer or hockey, are you looking to improve upon your pre and post match coverage through specials?
We’ve introduced more and more content around our major live sports – but we are very aware of the dangers of overkill. We have consciously restricted the duration of our pre- and post-match shows. Sports viewers prefer action to talk.

While on the subject of specials, Max was able to hook in the housewife in a big way by getting Mandira Bedi and later on Rakshandha Khan on board. This gave the telecast a glamour feel. Why isn't Ten looking at doing something along these lines?
Frankly, we believe in putting cricket first, and have been much appreciated for doing that.

Cricket telecasts have featured innovations like Hawkeye. What innovations are coming up in sports like football, tennis to get viewers more closely involved with the action?
The technology of sport is consistently updating. One particular development in sport is the ultra slow motion. This takes what is now “super slo-mo” being made even clearer. Meanwhile huge development work is going on in Europe on interactivity for the sports viewing experience.

In terms of doing production for another party, what key deals is Taj Television looking at? I would imagine that you would pitch for the BCCI in a big way.
Our key production developments are from our facilities in Dubai – it’s been good fun doing the work to help out the BCCI, and we will continue to do so if needed.

But as a business the potential to do production work for other clients is more in other territories.

There is lots of talk going on about new delivery systems like broadband coming in. Your take.
Yes, we’re very interested in the developments in this area and believe that we can do more with international rights by using the potential of broadband in India.