The increase in the production cast of PSL 9, the burden will have to be borne by the franchise

The ninth edition of PSL will start on February 17, 2024 in Lahore. According to the details, the TV production rights were given after considerable delay, leading to yet another controversy. 60% marks were technical and rest were financial bid. The company holding the broadcasting rights was disqualified in the technical bid. Thus, only two companies remained.

Surprisingly, all three companies expressed no confidence in the marking and appealed to the Grievance Committee. PCB Acting Chairman Shah Khawar resolved the matter amicably. After the hearing, the number of all the parties was increased. The disqualified company was also in the running. Later, the company with the second highest financial bid was given importance instead of the company with the lowest amount.

Therefore, the lowest bidder was left behind even though the company was initially qualified. This resulted in an increase in production cost of around Rs 50 crore. This year the cost of production will be Rs 1.15 billion and next year the amount will be Rs 1.21 billion, of which 95 percent will be provided by the franchisees. Sources revealed that there were objections from both the parties on the bidding process from the beginning and both had also filed complaints with the committee.

The apex company also raised questions over director commercial Babar Hamid’s supervision of the bid committee. PCB, on the other hand, says that the prescribed procedure was followed, considering the overall marks from technical and financial aspects. It may be recalled that the production cost of PSL last year was Rs 1.169 billion of which 95 percent was paid by franchises and 5 percent by PCB.