Doordarshan to telecast T20 World Cup matches, Paris Olympics and Paralympics

New Delhi : The national broadcaster Doordarshan will telecast the T20 World Cup being organised in the West Indies and USA on the DD Free Dish platform, Prasar Bharati announced on Monday.

"Doordarshan will follow up the high profile coverage of T20 World Cup with a lineup of telecasts of a number of major global international sporting events," the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting said in a release.

Apart from the T20 World Cup, Doordarshan will also telecast the upcoming Paris Olympics and Paralympics, India's series against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, and finals of the men's and women's singles of French Open 2024 and Wimbledon 2024.

"This includes live/deferred live and highlights of the Paris Olympics Games 2024(July 26-August 11, Paris Paralympic Games (August 28-September 8), India vs Zimbabwe cricket series (July 6-July 1), and India vs Sri Lanka cricket series (July 27-August 7) and Women's and Men’s finals of the French Open 2024 (June 8 & 9) and Wimbledon 2024 (July 13 & 14)," the release stated.

The announcement was made by Prasar Bharati CEO Gaurav Dwivedi during an interaction with the media in New Delhi on Monday. During the interaction, Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Sanjay Jaju along with Chairman, Prasar Bharati Navneet Kumar Sehgal, CEO, Prasar Bharati Gaurav Dwivedi, and DG, Doordarshan, Kanchan Prasad, launched a special anthem ‘Jazba’ for the T20 World Cup sung by Sukhwinder Singh. The Secretary also launched a promo for the gala T20 event narrated in the voice of the famous story-teller Neelesh Misra.

It is noteworthy that Doordarshan has reached an understanding with leading global sports bodies like the NBA and PGTA for showcasing their content on DD Sports. NBA’s popular e-sports property NBA 2K League matches are telecast on DD Sports Channel, the statement read.

Prasar Bharati is in advanced stages of negotiations with different sports bodies and agencies to showcase different sports leagues and properties on its sports channel, it added.

During the last year, DD Sports produced and telecast several multi-sporting events spread across the country. This included the Khelo India University Games in Astalakshmi (the eight states of North East), Khelo India Youth Games in Tamil Nadu, National Games in Goa, the inaugural edition of Khelo India Para Games in New Delhi and Khelo India Winter Games in Gulmarg and Leh.

Apart from its telecast on DD Sports, the feed of these games was shared with the leading private channels of the country like Star Sports, Jio Cinema, and Sony Network.

The Doordarshan team produced the World Feed of the cricket matches of the Hangzhou Asian Games in China - both men's and women's. The world feed produced by the DD team from ground zero was telecast in a number of countries in Asia.

Doordarshan had the linear television rights for all the platforms for the Indian cricket team tour of the West Indies in August 2023. Apart from commentary in English and Hindi, the feed of the limited-over matches played in the series was also produced in regional languages like Bhojpuri, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Kannada and they were telecast on different regional channels of Doordarshan Network.