Having signed the deal so close to the matches, Prasar Bharati is now working overtime to prepare the promos for telecast of the Australian Open.

Also, its in-house marketing team is busy marketing the event to advertisers. Encouraged by the response to Prasar Bharati's in-house marketing of the Sahara Millennium Super Soccer being held in Kolkata and being telecast on DD Sports, the public broadcaster is in a mood to repeat the marketing exercise for the Australian Open as well, says an official.

Citing the success of Miillennium Soccer, the official says that DD Sports has bagged advertisements from some of the top companies such as Pepsi, Berger Paints, Nestle, Hindustan Lever and Britannia for the event. It was after a bad experience with Pritish Nandy Communications (PNC) that Prasar Bharati geared up to market sporting events on its own. During the recent Sydney Olympics, PNC was hired by DD Sports to market the Games coverage for advertisements. But, PNC walked out of the deal midway through the Games, resulting in major losses to Prasar Bharati. Apart from in-house marketing, DD Sports is also focussing on in-house production, that is providing technical knowhow and infrastructure to telecast a sporting event on the channel. Referring to the Millennium Soccer, a DD official says: ``It's after 13 years that the DD inhouse team is working on production of a major sport event.'' Reliance Cup, which was held in 1987, was the last time that DD had used its inhouse team for production of aninternational sporting event. The Australian Open, however, is being produced by TWI.