I had written earlier that Sky may well lose out on the rights to England's tour to India because of price. Turns out Sky called Nimbus' bluff, and finally managed to bag the rights for apparently 10 million GBP. It does look like Sky had to pay more than they wanted to pay, but they also secured a 4 year deal in return. According to the deal, they get exclusive rights to England tours, and have to share the feed with an Asian population-focused channel like Zee/ARY/Sony for the other tours. Nimbus would have wanted to get a lot more than 10 million GBP for the England territories, but probably got a lot more than that Sky would have offered initially if they hadn't raised the Asian channel bogey! All in all, an interesting negotiation that most probably ended with both being happy and sad at the same time.
The happiest are the English Sky subscribers who were petrfied that they will have to buy some vague channel (Zee/Sony/ARY) they only knew existed, just for this series. Sky seems to have got 4 of their commentators (including my favourite - Nasser Hussain) - so the stage is all set for viewers in the UK to watch their favourite team lose to India:-)
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