A player who spent his entire life to contribute for his country, to be exact 24 years, and he never asked for a reward, but loved by billions of his fans, and now 200 not out production house is going to release a documentary film on his life. But you would be surprised to know that the BCCI denied to give footages of his cricketing moments for free! Is the BCCI really anything more than money making enterprise ?
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Moreover, yesterday BCCI crossed all the limits when production company of Sachin’s biopic asked for a discount and again BCCI denied for the same. So when it comes to business, BCCI does not seem to be in the mood to loosen its unexpected money even when it comes to master blaster Sachin Tendulkar. What’s wrong with BCCI ? Why can’t they understanding the difference between earning revenue from IPL and collecting money from biopic of a legendary player ?
Yesterday, BCCI officials explained that the BCCI by-laws have two categories for the fiction genre and documentary genre with differential rates for footage. The fiction genre usually requires limited amount of footage since most of the characters in the life of the cricketer are played by actors. The documentary genre as defined by BCCI cannot be released theatrically. Presently, the by-laws do not have a provision for a genre of a film which is a non-fiction biographical drama being released theatrically.
Well, this is not the first time that a cricketer has to pay for his own batting or footage of a match. Prior to this, when the film was made on Mahendra Singh Dhoni, which was produced by his friend Arun Pandey, the makers had to apparently pay Rs 1 crore to the board for footage of the matches. In fact, former skipper Saurav Ganguly too had to pay a certain amount to get his footage.
The producer has already purchased the rights from Cricket South Africa, Cricket Australia and the ICC for the film. The board have, however, agreed to provide Tendulkar’s famous three minutes and 50 seconds retirement speech at Wankhede Stadium on the last day of his lengthy career free of charge to the production company.
The Indian express report explains everything. The BCCI has the copyright to all matches conducted under its banner. Thus, if anyone needs to use it for commercial purposes then they have to buy them from the cricket board for which it has created a rate-card.
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The footage is charged on ‘per seconds basis’ as well as the price depends upon the matches and their significance. BCCI official said when they did not give concession to Dhoni for his biopic then how can board change its rules for Tendulkar’s biopic. Interestingly, the price of the video is fixed according to the value of that match. !
It is not just a movie for cricket lovers, it’s an emotion. If the success of MS Dhoni: The Untold Story was so huge, one can imagine the earthquake Sachin: A Billion Dreams will cause at the box office once it gets released.!
