Prasar Bharati earned record revenue from the Freedish e-auction that concluded on Monday after seven days of fierce bidding.
The pubcaster’s total revenue jumped 8% to approximately Rs 1,157 crore by selling 64 MPEG-2 slots.
Last year, Prasar Bharati had made Rs 1,071 crore from the e-auctions, marking 66% growth compared to 2022.
In 2022, Prasar Bharati earned Rs 645 crore from the allotment of 59 MPEG-2 slots which was 12% less than the revenue of Rs 734 crore garnered in 2021.
The auctions that began on February 19 and ended on February 26, are for the period from April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
The top four GEC networks’ Star Utsav, Zee Anmol, Colors Rishtey, and Sony Pal abstained from the MPEG-2 e-auctions this year.
Sri Adhikari Brothers’ Dhamaal and Sun Network’s Sun Hindi were the new entrants to bid for Prasar Bharati’s free-to-air DTH platform DD Freedish slots.
In total, the ‘cash-strapped’ news channels paid Rs 232 crore to get slots on DD Freedish.
This year, News24 returned to the Prasar Bharati-owned FTA DTH platform by buying a slot for Rs 17.85 crore in Bucket A+
This year, the Hindi movie channels led in expenditures, paying Rs 241 crore for 14 slots, with the news genre following closely behind at Rs 232 crore for 13 slots. Hindi GECs secured the third position in terms of spending, purchasing 12 slots for Rs 228 crore.
From the number of slots to be auctioned in each round, to the change in reserve price for round 2 of the e-auction, Prasar Bharati introduced a lot of changes in the e-auction methodology in 2023.
The subscribers of MPEG-2 set-top-boxes are estimated to be in the range of 40-45 million.
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