So far, sports telecast has been largely exclusive to the south Asian joint venture ESPN-STAR Sports, which has successfully established the two channels in the pay television market.

"Entry of new player would definitely mean end of the cartel that ESPN-STAR Sports has been running," said Vicky Chaudhry of Home Cable Net.

Most cable operators would now have the option of choosing a channel for particular events instead of carrying a particular channel throughout the year, he said. "This would give the operators the scope to save substantially on the subscription-fee front so that they invest in hardware."Chaudhry said that ESPN-STAR Sports has been revising its subscription fee and subscriber base before the Sahara Cup every year. Now that thetournament has been called off, the company will not be in the same bargaining position, he added.

Chaudhry said the domestic sports market centres around cricket. The rights being competitively bid would definitely jack the cost for any of the bidders. At the same time, the bidder would have to be cautious regarding its per subscriber pricing since, the terrestrial feed as well as the satellite feed are currently both available to the operators.

Cable Networks Association's Rakesh Datta also felt that the cable operators would have a relatively comfortable time with the new players. He however, cautioned that in case the rights are transferred from one private player to another, the same situation may occur with regard to subscription fees.Datta said the situation demanded that a comprehensive amendment was introduced to the Cable Networks Act making a few things like subscriber management system compulsory.

Significantly, some of the leading cable operators recently met Prasar Bharati chief executiveofficer Rajeeva Ratna Shah and proposed that DD should consider digitally encrypting its sports channel and bid for important sporting events. In this regard, Chaudhry said the operators would rather pay the national broadcaster rather than a foreign private channel.Both Datta and Chaudhry stated that the world over media laws prevented channels to show advertisements in case they were charging subscription fees. In India, however, channels are charging both subscription fee and earning revenue from advertisement, which the two operators felt should be set right through legislation.